QUESTION FIVE. 83 



right which Great Britain has hitherto exercised, of excluding those 

 fishermen from the British portion of the Bay of Fundy, and they 

 are prepared to direct their colonial authorities to allow hencefor- 

 ward the United States fishermen to pursue their avocations in any 

 part of the Bay of Fundy, provided they dp not approach, except 

 m the cases specified in the treaty of 1818, within three miles of the 

 entrance of any bay on the coast of Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. 



Mr. Everett replied on the 25th March, 1845 (App., p. 143) : 



The Government of the United States, the undersigned is per- 

 suaded, will duly appreciate the friendly motives which have led to 

 the determination on the part of Her Majesty's Government an- 

 nounced in Lord Aberdeen's note, and which he doubts not will have 

 the natural effect of acts of liberality between powerful States, of 

 producing benefits to both parties, beyond any immediate interest 

 which may be favourably affected. 



While he desires, however, without reserve, to express his sense of 

 the amicable disposition evinced by Her Majesty's Government on 

 this occasion in relaxing in favour of the United States the exercise 

 of what, after deliberate reconsideration, fortified by high legal 

 authority, is deemed an unquestioned right of Her Majesty's Govern- 

 ment, the undersigned would be unfaithful to his duty did he omit 

 to remark to Lord Aberdeen that no arguments have at any time been 

 adduced to shake the confidence of the Government of the United 

 States in their own construction of the treaty. While they have 

 ever been prepared to admit that in the letter of one expression of 

 that instrument there is some reason for claiming a right to exclude 

 United States fishermen from the Bay of Fundy (it being difficult 

 to deny to that arm of the sea the name of " bay " which long geo- 

 graphical usage has assigned to it), they have ever strenuously main- 

 tained that it is only on their own construction of the entire article 

 that its known design, in reference to the regulation of the fisheries, 

 admits of being carried into effect. 



The undersigned does not make this observation for the sake of 



detracting from the liberality evinced by Her Majesty's Government 



in relaxing from what they regard as their r'ght; but it would be 



placing his own Government in a false position to accept as 



05 mere favour, that for which they have so long and strenuously 



contended as due to them under the convention. 



It becomes the more necessary to make this observation in conse- 

 quence of some doubt as to the extent of the proposed relaxation. 

 Lord Aberdeen, after stating that Her Majesty's Government felt 

 themselves constrained to adhere to the right of excluding the United 

 States fishermen from the Bay of Fundy, and also with regard ho 

 other bays on the British American coasts, to maintain the position 

 that no United States fisherman has, under that convention, the right 

 tc fish within three miles of the entrance of such bays, as designated 

 by a line drawn from headland to headland at that entrance, adds 

 that " while Her Majesty's Government still feel themselves bound to 

 maintain these positions as a matter of right, they are not insensible 

 to the advantages which would accrue to both countries from the 

 relaxation of that right." 



This form of expression might seem to indicate that the relaxation 

 proposed had reference to both positions; but when Lord Aberdeen 



