THE FISHERY CONVENTIONS 



625 



London, and on their disagreement it was decided by the 

 umpire, Mr Joshua Bates, in favour of the United States. 

 His conclusion was that the Bay of Fundy was not a British 

 bay, nor a bay within the meaning of the word as used in 

 the treaties of 1783 and 1818, but belonged rather to the 

 class which comprised such bays as the Bay of Bengal and 

 the Bay of Biscay, over which no nation can have the right 

 to assume sovereignty. He also pointed out that one of 

 its headlands was in the United States ; and he thought that 

 the doctrine of the headlands had "received a proper limit" 



Fig. 1 8. Bay des Chaleurs. 



in the Anglo-French convention of 1839, where a ten -mile 

 base-line was adopted. 



A few yeans before this, negotiations had been opened 

 between the Governments with the view of establishing re- 

 ciprocal free -trade between Canada and .the United States, 

 and in June 1854 a treaty was signed at Washington, 

 commonly known as the Reciprocity Treaty, by which certain 

 articles of produce of the British colonies and of the United 

 States were admitted to each country respectively free of 

 duty, and reciprocal rights of fishery were granted. The 

 subjects of either state were to be free to fish along the 



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