DESPATCHES, REPOBTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 149 



manently to the United States, and stated that as they conceived 

 themselves to be abandoning a right to all these advantages, conferred 

 by the article of the treaty of 1788. it appeared to the Govt. of the 

 United States no less necessary, than just, that the fishery which 

 they were henceforth to enjoy, should be distinctly admitted as per- 

 manent, and as not depending upon the duration of the treaty, in 

 which the stipulation was contained 



With respect to the colonial trade it appears to us only necessary to 

 communicate to your Lordship, that while they admitted the impor- 

 tance of the trade to the United States (attended as they stated them- 

 selves to believe, with corresponding advantages to Great Britain) 

 they stated their willingness rather to forgo entering into any ar- 

 rangement on this subject, than depart from the principle upon which 

 the projet of their present article was framed, namely that however 

 limited that trade might be, it should within those limits be equally 

 open to America and to Great Britain They further stated that they 

 could not consent to put the intercourse between Bermuda Turk's 

 Island Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and the United States upon 

 a different footing from that upon which the West India trade 

 (properly so called) should ultimately stand. In reply to an observa- 

 tion made by us, that so far as regarded the trade between Bermuda, 

 Turks Island and Nova Scotia and the United States, the effect of the 

 article as explained by them, would be to place Great Britain on a 

 worse footing than she stood at present; they frankly stated that, that 

 was certainly their intention, and that there could be no doubt, that 

 the restrictive system applied by the recent law of the United States 

 to the trade between the United States and the British West Indies, 

 would be applied in a future session, to that carried on with Bermuda 

 Turk's Island & Halifax, it being as they stated, the policy of the 

 American Government to counteract by these means the system 

 adopted by Great Britain of defeating, through the medium of those 

 ports of entrepot, the general prohibitions of the United States 

 against the West India intercourse. 



The American commissioners closed their observations by submit- 

 ting projets of articles upon some other points, which they were 

 desirous of offering as subjects of discussion, with a view to their 

 eventually forming parts of the proposed convention. Copies of these 

 articles are inclosed for your Lordship's information. 



We declined entering at the time into any discussion of the proposi- 

 tions they had brought forward, till we should have had an opportu- 

 nity of considering the articles themselves as necessarily containing a 

 more precise view of their intentions than could be conveyed by any 

 previous verbal explanation. 



The American commissioners then requested a communication on 

 our part of the proposition with respect to impressment, which we 

 had before stated to be contingent on the production by them of the 

 articles which had never been delivered to us. In acceding to their 

 wish and delivering to them the projet of a convention which will be 

 found in the protocol of the conference, we thought it, our duty to 

 call their attention among other circumstances to that of His Ma- 

 jesty's Government having waived the introduction of any stipula- 

 tion, which should require the crews of vessels met with on the high 

 seas to be mustered. In doing so it was impossible for us to avoid 

 impressing upon them the strong feeling which has always, and so 



