THE FISHERY CONVENTIONS 629 



license of a fee at the rate of one and a half dollars per ton, 

 in order to purchase bait, ice, and all other supplies and outfits, 

 to tranship their catch and ship crews, and gave them some 

 other privileges, declaring also that forfeiture was to be 

 exacted only for the offence of fishing or preparing to fish 

 in territorial waters. 1 



Unfortunately, this treaty failed to pass the Senate of 

 the United States and was never ratified, and the system 

 temporarily adopted as a modus vivendi has been regularly 

 renewed since, and is still in force. 2 



It is to be noted that the arrangement in the treaty, both as 

 to drawing lines on charts to separate the common from the 

 exclusive fishing waters and for the adoption of a ten-mile 

 base-line for bays, was proposed, not by the British Govern- 

 ment, but by that of the United States. The British Govern- 

 ment, indeed, strongly objected to a ten-mile line as involving 

 " a surrender of fishing rights " and making " common fishing- 

 grounds of the territorial waters which, by the law of nations, 

 have been invariably regarded, both in Great Britain and the 

 United States, as belonging to the adjacent country," and they 

 cited the Bay of Chaleurs as an example. They argued that 

 in the convention with France in 1839, and in other similar 

 conventions, the boundary-lines selected were due to special 

 configuration of the coast, and could not be well settled "by 

 reference to the law of nations " ; and attention was called to 

 the claims of the United States to Delaware Bay and other 

 bays on their coasts. In reply to these observations of the 

 British Government, the United States said they had proposed 

 the width of ten miles not only because it had been adopted 

 in fishery conventions, but also because it was deemed reason- 

 able and just in the case in question ; " while they might have 

 claimed a width of six miles as a basis of settlement, fishing 

 within bays and harbours only slightly wider would be con- 

 fined to areas so narrow as to render it practically valueless, 

 and almost certainly expose the fishermen to constant danger 

 of carrying their operations into forbidden waters ; a width of 



1 Parl. Papers, No. 1 (1888), (C. 5262). 



- The number of American fishing vessels which take the licenses for Canadian 

 waters is usually about 100, the fees aggregating 10,000 or 12,000 dollars per 

 annum. Ann. Reports, Marine and Fisheries, Ottawa. 



