536 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 



li.-hod. Mr. Webster and the public of the two countries, would have 

 seen that, instead of conceding a right, Lord Aberdeen expressly 

 reserved it; but in order to prove the friendly feeling of Great 

 Britain toward the United States, her Majesty's government by Lord 

 Aberdeen's note, " relaxed," as regarded the Bay of Fundy, the right 

 which her Majesty's government felt bound to maintain of excluding 

 American fishermen from that bay. 



This purpose of her Majesty's government is as fully apparent in 

 my letters as in Lord Aberdeen's; and if Lord Malmesbury will care- 

 fully examine that of the 26th of April, published by Mr. Webster, 

 he will find that he has altogether misapprehended its purport. In 

 the sentence which he quotes from my letter, the important word in 

 reference to the matter in hand is concede. But after stating that 

 the British government had come to the determination to concede to 

 American fishermen the right to fish in the Bay of Fundy, I added, 

 not as Lord Malmesbury's despatch represents me to have done, that 

 I had " claimed the same right as regards other bays," but that I 

 had expressed the hope that the concession was meant to extend to 

 them; and, further, that it ought to be understood in the United 

 States that the extension of the same privilege to the other great 

 bays is a matter of negotiation between the two governments. 



All this is certainty true. The " right " which I state to have 

 been conceded is not the right which was reserved by Great Britain. 

 The right conceded to us, as she understood the matter, was the right 

 to fish in the Bay of Fundy; the right reserved by Great Britain 

 was the right to exclude our fishermen from that bay; and this 

 right, as she deemed it, she relaxed in our favor. There is not only 

 no contradiction between the statements, but the relaxation (as Great 

 Britain considers it) of her right to exclude us from the bay was the 

 foundation, by concession, of our right to enter it. Lord Malmesbury 

 does not surely deny that our fishermen have now a right to enter the 

 Bay of Fundy. The difference between the two governments is that 

 we claim that right under the convention of 1818, while Great Britain 

 admits it under the concession of 1815. 



Lord Malmesbury's strictures on my language imply that conces- 

 sion cannot be the basis of right; whereas half the land-titles of 

 Europe have no other foundation. All America is held under char- 

 ters from the Crown, granting or conceding a property to the 

 grantees; and on the European continent, concession is the technical 

 term for a grant of land. 



There is one expression in my letter of 26th of April, 1845, which, 

 hastily read, may have led Lord Malmesbury to suppose that it 

 would cause an impression that Great Britain had acknowledged our 

 right under the convention of 1818 to fish in the Bay of Fundy. 

 That expression is as follows : " I was careful to point out to Lord 

 Aberdeen that all the reasons for admitting the right of Americans 

 to fish in the Bay of Fundy " apply to the other outer bays. This, 

 of course, is true ; but it refers to what I had maintained, not to what 

 England had acknowledged. My letter of 26th of April needs only 

 to be carefully read to perceive that its whole tenor is in accordance 

 with the facts of the case, and with the nature of the concession, (as 

 her Majesty's government regarded it,) as to the Bay of Fundy. 



In my letter to Lord Aberdeen, of the 25th March, while I 

 strenuously maintained the American construction of the convention, 



