540 l "KU'si'OM. KNUE, ETC. 



in the notice giveD by Mr. Crampton on the 5th of July, makes it 

 a matter of some regret that in the Queen's speech, at the opening 

 of the present session of Parliament, the American encroachments 

 only are mentioned as the cause of the naval movement. 



I have already disclaimed the intention of going into a general 

 discussion of the fishery question, but I think it proper to allude 

 to one important misapprehension in the British argument, which, 

 though it has, no doubt, had the chief agency in producing the dif- 

 ference of opinion between the two governments as to the true intent 

 of the convention of 1818, has not, I believe, been pointed out in the 

 diplomatic discussions between the United States and Great Britain. 

 Lord Aberdeen, in his note of the 10th of March, 1845, announcing 

 the relaxation as to the Bay of Fundy, thus expresses himself: " Her 

 Majesty's government must still maintain, and in this view they 

 are fortified by high legal authority, that the Bay of Fundy is 

 rightfully claimed by Great Britain as a bay within the meaning 

 of the treatj^ of 1818. And they equally maintain the position which 

 was laid down in the note of the undersigned, dated the 15th of 

 April last, that, with regard to the other bays on the British Amer- 

 ican coasts, no United States fisherman has, under that convention, 

 the right to fish within three miles of the entrance of such bays as 

 designated by a line drawn from headland to headland of that 

 entrance." 



The "high legal authority" here referred to was not communi- 

 cated to me by Lord Aberdeen, and is believed never to have been 

 communicated to the government of the United States. But I think 

 I do not err in supposing the allusion to be to the opinion signed 

 J. Dodson and Thomas Wilde, then the law officers of the Crown, 

 given on a requisition of Lord Palmerston in 1841. In this opinion, 

 which has been published at Halifax, these distinguished jurists 

 say " that no right exists on the part of American citizens to enter 

 the bays of Nova Scotia, there to take fish, although the fishing 

 being within the bay may be at a greater distance than three miles 

 from the shore of the bay, as we are of opinion that the term head- 

 land is used in the treaty to express the part of the land we have 

 before mentioned, excluding the interior of the bays and the inlets 

 of the coast." 



Now, neither the term " headland," nor anything equivalent or 

 synonymous, occurs in the convention of 1818; and this legal author- 

 ity, which, no doubt, was mainly instrumental in leading the home 

 government to adopt the colonial construction of the treaty, rests, in 

 this respect, upon an imaginary basis. The law officers of the Crown 

 appear to have mistaken a sentence in the ex parte case made up at 

 Halifax, in which the word "headland" appears for a part of the 

 treaty between the United States and Great Britain, which they were 

 required to expound. The government of the United States cannot 

 but regret that an official opinion which had the effect of reversing 

 the construction of the convention on which Great Britain had acted 

 from 1818 to 1842, which excluded our fishermen from some of the 

 best fishing-grounds, after the undisturbed enjoyment of a quarter 

 of a century, and finally brought the countries to the verge ot a de- 

 plorable collision, should have been given by the law officers of the 

 Crown without a more careful perusal of the text of the treaty. 



