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example — with tlie dense fogs which prevail there, with tlie frequent 

 and terrific gales, and with the fearful whirls and great rise and 

 fall of the tide, understand full well what was intended to be reserved 

 in the treaty, and the importance of the reservations. But such per- 

 sons never heard, and, 1 will venture to say, never will hear, of fishing 

 vessels, or of any class of vessels, effecting either of the purposes 

 mentioned in the proviso, while saihng broad in the great seas which, 

 in common language, are called hays. Yet these seas, in the opinion of 

 the crown lawyers, are only open to our vessels in cases of distress, 

 and when not one object for which they say we may lawfully enter 

 them can, in fact, be executed. An attempt to show that the Queen's 

 advocate, and her Majesty's attorney general, do not thus absurdly in- 

 terpret the convention, involves the admission that our vessels, once 

 across the line drawn three miles outside of the headlands, may seek 

 the small branch-bays within these seas; and so demonstrates the 

 accuracy of the construction which I have given ; for then it follo\vs 

 that the right to fish in the branch-baj's only is renounced, inasmuch 

 as '■^such bays," after all, are the bays which afford the shelter, the ac- 

 commodation for repairs, and the wood and water, contemplated by 

 the convention. 



"It is an established rule in the exposition of statutes," says Chan- 

 cellor Kent, "th;it the intention of the lawgiver is to be deduced fi'om 

 a view of the whole and of every part of a statute, taken and com- 

 pared together. The real intention, when accurately ascertained, will 

 alwa^'s prevail over the hteral sense of the terms." And he says 

 further, that "When the words are not explicit, the intention is to be 

 collected from the occasion and necessity of the law, from the mischief 

 felt, and the remedy in view; and the intention is to be taken or pre- 

 sumed, according to what is consonant to reason and good discretion." 

 If such is the fact with regard to municipal law, how much more im- 

 portant is the principal in the interpretation of treaties, which affect 

 the harmony and peace of nations? I submit, then, that we have the 

 "intention" of Messrs. Rush and Gallatin, in their renunciation of the 

 right to fish in certain ba3^s; that the pretension of England, that the 

 war of IS 12 had abrogated our entire rights, as provided in the treaty 

 of 17S3, was the "occasion and necessity" for new stipulations on the 

 subject; that the opening conference between Lord Bathurst and Mr. 

 Adams, in 1815, shows, beyond all doubt, that fishing, b}^ our country- 

 men, within the creeks and close upon the shores of the British terri- 

 tories, was the "mischief felt;" and that the exclusion of American 

 vessels from the common three-mile jurisdiction was "the remedy in 

 view," in the renunciatory clause of the convention. Nor can it be 

 urged that the relincjuishment on our part of the boat or shore fisheries 

 was too inconsiderable an object to be so strongl}^ insisted on by the 

 British government. I understand the value of these fisheries far too 

 well to allow any force to such a suggestion. The colonists, secure in 

 these, have vast treasures at their very doors. Oftentimes they have 

 but to cast, tend, and draw seines and nets, to take hundreds of barrels 

 of mackerel and herring in a single day; and years have occurred 

 when no less than forty thousand barrels of the former fish have been 

 caught in a season, on a portion of the coast only twelve miles long. 



