DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 293 



That the opinion delivered by certain officers of the Crown is that. 



by the terms of the Convention, American citizens were excluded from auy 

 right of fishing within three miles from the coast of British America; and that 

 the prescribed distance of three miles is to be measured from the headlands 

 or extreme points next to the sea ; and that consequently no right exists, on 

 the part of American citizens, to enter the Bay of Nova Scotia, there to take 

 fish, although fishing, being icithin the bay. may be at a GREATER DISTANCE THAN 

 THREE MILES, from the shore of the bay. 



Such is the pretension which England sets up, and which she 

 threatens to enforce with the one hundred and fifty guns which she 

 carries boastingly, mounted, loaded, and primed, on board the nine- 

 teen vessels now decking the sea at the entrance and in the environs 

 of the Bays of Chaleurs and Fundy; and we are told, Sir, and told 

 by our Secretary of State, in language most solemn and impressive, 

 that our fishermen must look out AND BE UPON THEIR GUARD. 



Sir, is England right ? Are we wrong in all this ? And why is it 

 that from the very outset we look so humble, so dejected, so submis- 

 sive, so enduring? 



It is not denied, is it, that the liberties which England now at- 

 tempts thus violently to wrest from us have been practised by our 

 fishermen from time immemorial? They were liberties acknowl- 

 edged in the Treaty of 1783, as preexisting to it; liberties retained 

 against most insidious and daring pretensions at the Peace of Ghent, 

 where they were not even suffered to be drawn into question ; liberties 

 enjoyed before and after the Convention of 1818; liberties allowed, 

 though under an ungracious, but unadmitted proffer of favour and 

 grace, in 1845; and yet, all at once, without previous remonstrance, 

 or the least notice, this, our long possession, this, our solemnly- 

 stipulated right, without whose recognition the Peace of 1783 could 

 have never been concluded; which our negotiators protected against 

 the attaint of a query or a doubt in 1814 ; which our Envoys thought 

 they had ennerved and strengthened by the Convention of 1818; 

 which Lord Stanley, through sufferance, at least, consented to let 

 us enjoy after 1845, as we had enjoyed it before, is brutally torn away 

 from us, as an usurpation and encroachment upon waters from which 

 it would seem we are to be excluded; our vessels are captured, con- 

 demned, and sold before an explanation is sought and obtained, or 

 asked and refused; and all this in the midst of the most profound 

 peace, and when England is incessantly receiving at the hands of our 

 Government most profuse tokens and manifestations of condescend- 

 ence, and is allowed, there, to turn to her advantage and profit the 

 good will which a sister Republic bears us, and the influence which 

 that good will enables us to wdeld over her affairs as in the 

 174 case of Nicaragua, a State all American in spirit and feelings, 

 unmercifully spoliated to enrich Costa Rica, but a British 

 province in all her associations and tendencies; and, here, to introduce 

 her bankers in our Treasury, and give them charge of our concerns, 

 and institute them our disbursing agents, as in the case of the two 

 last installments of the indemnity due to Mexico, that British 

 creditors might get a chance of paying themselves of doubtful claims; 

 and political marauders in Mexico be enabled to pounce in transitu 

 upon the emaciated treasure, and, with its remnants, to bring about 

 in that doomed country a crisis and a revolution. Sir, I repeat it 

 again, these are strange times indeed! 



