504 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 



the capture " to settle the question " as to the construction of the 

 treaty, it is not to be conceived that he should be so uninformed on 

 this subject as not to know that not merely on the part of the fisher- 

 men as a body, but on that of their government, the validity of the 

 British construction of the treaty has always been contested, and 

 that if the fishermen of the United States forbear to act on the con- 

 struction which their own government has ever maintained, it is 

 simply to avoid capture by the provincial armed vessels. 



Admitting that the Doughtys may innocently have thought that 

 the orders which were brought by " the searcher " proceeded not from 

 the collector but from the officer who captured the vessel, the under- 

 signed does not find in this statement itself much further discrepancy 

 from the admissions of Mr. Davenport, than may alwaj^s be expected 

 between the representations of an officer of intelligence justifying his 

 conduct to his superiors, and those of ignorant men telling their story 

 to their employers under a strong sense of recent loss and oppression. 



Mr. Davenport in one point makes a charge against the Doughtys 

 for which there is no foundation in their narrative. He says, " the 

 crew of the Argus remained on board that vessel from the time she 

 was brought into port, the night of the 7th of August to about mid- 

 day of the 8th, and therefore the story about their removal in fifteen 

 minutes is not correct." But the Doughtys expressly mention that 

 the crew of the Argus remained on board from the time the vessel 

 was brought in on the morning of the 7th till ten o'clock of the 8th. 

 The " fifteen minutes " ran from the time the order was given to 

 leave the vessel, not from their arrival in port, and without any ref- 

 erence to the deposition of the Doughtys, the undersigned would infer 

 from the statement of the collector himself, that after the inventory 

 was taken on the morning of the 8th, the crew were peremptorily 

 required to quit the vessel ; and as her " stores " were included in the 

 inventory, it is equally plain that they were not permitted to carry 

 the means of subsistence away with them. It appears from his own 

 report that Mr. Davenport, even when urged to do so by Mr. Dodd, 

 refused to relax in any degree the rigor of the law towards those 

 whom he thinks proper to designate as the hostile crew of the Argus. 



The conduct of Mr. Dodd, in endeavoring to procure from the col- 

 lector permission for these poor fishermen to stay on board their own 

 vessel another day, (for it must be remembered she was not yet 

 judicially proceeded against, and that therefore in the humane in- 

 tendment of the law her master was as yet innocent of its violation,) 

 was certainly kind, and his furnishing, unsolicited, a gratuitous pas- 

 sage to Halifax for the captain of the Argus and two of his crew, still 

 more so; although this was not done, as Lord Aberdeen appears to 

 be under the impression, " after the condemnation of the vessel," 

 but before the commencement of any judicial proceeding against 

 her. It was, however, not the less meritorious and the undersigned 

 sincerely regrets the injustice done him in the deposition of the 

 Doughtys. Could he now deem that injustice wilful, or should it on 

 further inquiry so appear, the undersigned would not fall behind 

 Lord Aberdeen in his emphatic reprobation of it. 



The undersigned hopes, however, that the foregoing suggestions 

 will lead Lord Aberdeen to a judgment somewhat more favorable on 

 that point. That the depositions of the Doughtys were given under 



