QUESTION SEVEN. 129 



or attempting to enter, in violation of the law were forfeitable. 

 And any English vessel that could lawfully enter our ports was com- 

 pelled to give a bond, if laden outward with American products, not 

 to land them in a British colony or territory from which American 

 vessels were excluded. The presumption is, that quite independently 

 of fishing rights and liberties, no American vessel was for long 

 before, and after, 1818 permitted by English law to touch and trade 

 in Canadian ports. (App., p. 378.) 



******* 



It may be conceded that, apart from the right of American fish- 

 ermen to take fish of all kinds within certain clearly defined British 

 waters, American deep-sea fishermen have no greater rights, by treaty 

 or public law, in British ports, than British fishermen have in 

 American ports, so far as concerns revenue police, maritime tolls or 

 taxes, pilotage, light-houses, quarantine, and all matters of cere- 

 monial. (App., p. 382.) 



******* 



The treaty of 1818 gave rights of fishing independent of general 

 commercial rights, although it may be said that as to shelter, repairs, 

 wood, and water, the treaty did give to fishermen certain commercial 

 rights, or rather a few rights of humanity. The treaty did not 

 restrain the granting or the exercising of commercial rights. The 

 right, if it be a right, of an American to buy anything in Canada 

 does not come of the inshore fishing treaty of 1818. (App., p. 382.) 



UNITED STATES SENATE, 1887. 



In a report dated the 19th January, 1887, the committee for foreign 

 relations of the Senate, after referring to the article of the treaty of 

 1783, said (App., p. 387) : 



This article, it will be observed, recognised an existing right 

 143 and practice in respect of American fishermen exercising their 

 calling not only at sea on the banks of Newfoundland, but in 

 all places in the sea within what would be strictly British waters. 

 And it will be observed also that this treaty said nothing on the 

 subject of commercial intercourse between the people of the United 

 States and those of the British provinces. (App., p. 397.) 



******* 



The treaties between the United States and Great Britain on the 

 subject of intercommunication, and the rights of the citizens and 

 subjects of the one in the ports and territories of the other have not 

 included the British dominions of North America (with possibly 

 certain exceptions as to intercourse by land), and such intercourse, 

 strangely enough, still remains the subject of legislation merely in 

 the two countries. 



In the debate in the United States Senate of 24th January 1887 

 Senator Evarts said that 



the settled opinion of the Government now is that the treaty of 1818 

 is nothing but a fishing treaty and not a commercial treaty at all. It 

 is regulative of the fishing interest as there described as the subject- 



