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the* straits, passacfos, and harbors of our entire coast. Thousands of 

 these vessels visit our ports annually; ;ind the "in-shore" V(jyage is 

 invaluable to them during the stormy and boisterous months of the 

 ■year. Every merchant engaged in navigation is aware that, as a class, 

 the small vessels built in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are iar iiv 

 ferior to our own. To say nothing of the want of" skill and sobriety in 

 same of the masters, and nothing of the weak and misshapen hulls of 

 many of the colonial craft, it m.-iy be remarked that a proportion ol such 

 as are employed in the trans])ortation of wood ;.md gypsum are fitted 

 with the cast-ofl" sails and cordage of timber-ships. To "dodge along 

 .«hor(^" is the only Siife course for these vessels to pursue, as none can 

 denv. To allow them to do so, is but an act of common humanity. 

 To deny them the "boon," would be to involve many in certain de- 

 struction. 



And now, suppose thnt the legislature of Maine should remonstrate 

 r.o our government on the subject, and insist that the people of that 

 State suffer great wrong, beciuse colonial vessels, when bound to Port- 

 land, Boston, and other northern ports, instead of keeping broad off at 

 sea, "hug the shore" and pass through Edgemaroggin and Mooscpeck 

 Reaches, over Bass-harbor bar, through Fox Island thoroughfare, and 

 between Monhegan and the main land. Suppose, too, that the legis- 

 latures of New York and Connecticut should join the frontier State 

 and demand the exclusion of Briti>;h vessels Irom Long Island Sound? 

 Suppose, further, that finally the Attorney General of the United States 

 should submit an opinion to the Presidt nt, in which he should say that 

 no stipulations giving the right to navigate these straits and this sound 

 exist, either in the tienty of 1783, in Jay's treaty in 1794, in the treaty 

 of peace in 1814, in the tie;ity of commerce in 1815, in the convention 

 of 1818, in the McLnne airjingement in 18oU, or in the last, the treaty 

 of Washington in 1842; who would fail to see the inhumanity — na}'-, 

 the outright wickedness— of the whole proceeding? Yet, were :dl this 

 to be d(inc, they would do no mo7-c than has actually been done by the 

 political leaders of Nova Scotia and the crown lawyers of England. 

 As a matter of right, the British colonists can he treated precisely as 

 they r( quire the government of England to treat us. It^ — as they aver, 

 and <iu(jte international law to prove — the Strait of Canso is not open 

 to o?ir vessels under sail and passing to and from the Gulf of . St. 

 Lawrence, then, and for the same reasons — geographical and political — 

 the "reaches," sounds, straits, and "ihoroughlarcb" along the coast of 

 the United States, are not open to t/iem. Can this position be denied? 



In rej)ly to Lord Falkland's fifth query, the law officers of the crown 

 say: " \Viih reference to the claim of a right to land on the Magdalene 

 islands, and to fish from the shores thereof, it must be observed that, 

 by the tr(^aty, the liberty of drying and curing fish (purposes wln'eh 

 could only be accomplished by landing) in any of the unsettled bays, 

 &c., of the southern part of Nt wfi)undland, and of the coast of Labra- 

 dor, is specifically provided for; but such piivilege is distinctly nega- 

 tived in any settled bay. Sec. And it must tlu relbre be inferred that, 

 if the lib( rty of landing on the shores of the Magdalene islands bad 

 been intended to be conceded, such an important concebsion would 



