290 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



No. 102. 1852, August 11: Letter from the Earl of Malmesbury to 



Mr. Grampian. 



No. 79. FOREIGN OFFICE, August 11, 1852. 



SIR : In your despatch No. 106 you state that the President of the 

 United States had suggested to you and to Mr. Webster the propriety 

 of entering into some temporary arrangement with regard to the 

 Fishery Question now pending, by which the danger of collision be- 

 tween British subjects and American citizens might be averted dur- 

 ing the interval of time which must necessarily elapse before a per- 

 manent settlement of the points in dispute can be effected. 



The arrangement proposed by the President in his conversation 

 with you is stated to be simply as follows ; that the British author- 

 ities should for the present abstain from seizing American vessels 

 found fishing in disputed waters ; but you add that the President in 

 a communication addressed to Mr. Webster had further suggested 

 that, by mutual agreement between the Governments of the United 

 States and of England, the vessels of both countries should forbear 

 to fish in those waters until the respective rights of each could be 

 finally and amicably settled. 



It is impossible for Her Majesty's Government not to do justice to 

 the motive by which the President appears to have been actu- 

 172 ated in suggesting the above arrangement: and any proposal 

 calculated to give time for the removal of misapprehension 

 and the subsidence of excited feeling on the part of the people of the 

 United States before a permanent settlement of the existent differ- 

 ence is attempted, cannot fail to meet with their warm and cordial 

 concurrence. 



But however desirable the object which it is thus sought to attain, 

 Her Majesty's Government cannot but perceive that the proposed 

 arrangement as it affects the rights of British subjects, rests on a 

 basis of such manifest inequality as to render its acceptance by 

 England impossible. 



No- question has ever been raised, on the part of the United States 

 or of any other Power with regard to the right of British vessels to 

 fish within the limits of the disputed waters, their privilege to do so 

 is undoubted and indubitable, and in waiving this privilege even for 

 a limited period, the}^ would be parting with that which confessedly 

 belongs to them by the express provisions of the Treaty of 1818. 

 The only point concerning which any difference of opinion either 

 does or can exist, is whether the right so enjoyed by British subjects 

 is a right belonging exclusively to them or one which they share 

 equally with the citizens of the United States. Her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment cannot consider it as a just or reasonable demand on the part 

 of the Government of the United States that British subjects should 

 be called upon temporarily to abandon at considerable loss to them- 

 selves, a privilege their title to which has never been questioned 

 merely on account of the claim which has recently been put forward 

 by the citizens of another State, to exercise a similar privilege, con- 

 current with, but in no way invalidating that already exercised by 

 Her Majesty's subjects. 



Compelled therefore for the reason already stated to reject the 

 proposition abovementioned but earnestly desirous by all means in 



