DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 841 



lision in the present season should be avoided, by his receiving an 

 assurance that no American vessel would be actually seized for fishing 

 in the open bays; with regard to which the American Government 

 placed a different construction on the terms of the Convention from 

 that adopted by Great Britain. Mr. Crampton felt unable to give 

 this assurance, but deemed it advisable at once to communicate with 

 me on the subject. 



2. The vessels employed under my orders in the Gulf have already 

 instructions to exercise the utmost moderation : to prefer warning to 

 seizure; and are told, as last year, to drive away, not to actually 

 seize, beyond three miles from the shore, except in the last resort, 

 in case of determined and contumacious encroachment in what are 

 clearly bays of our provinces. 



3. The American Government does not conceal that it has been 

 induced to send a force to the British waters, by the clamour in the 

 Eastern States. The measure has been preceded by an avowal on the 

 part of many of the United States fishermen, that they are armed, 

 and will defend themselves by force against our smaller cruizers; 

 while no concession appears to have been contemplated on the part of 

 the United States Government in exchange for that they profess to 

 deem reasonable on ours, beyond expressing a disposition to avoid 

 dwelling on disputed points in the orders they intended to give their 

 commanders. 



4. It is to be observed that the United States Government has 

 deemed force necessary to protect their rights, when no complaint of 

 the mode in which the Convention was enforced last year has, to my 

 knowledge, been made, and no seizure or circumstance had taken place 

 during the present season which justified the probability of a colli- 

 sion, except one may be brought on by their own people, or in conse- 

 quence of an endeavour to resume the fisheries in the Bay of Chaleur, 

 from which they were excluded last year; and the resumption would 

 tend to the great disadvantage of the British fisheries around that 

 bay. 



5. Commodore Perry, in 1852, although not officially authorized to 

 establish what were fishing-grounds open to his countrymen, did not 

 attempt to urge that Chaleur was of that description, and did not 

 himself enter the bay. 



6. I am not authorized by my instructions to pursue a different 

 course from that of last year; and I consider the moment when the 

 United States are sending a force beyond any that can be necessary 

 for their proposed object, ill-suited for concessions. Mr. Crampton 

 did not dissent from this view of Mr. Marcy's proposal ; and a mes- 

 sage was therefore sent by electric telegraph on the 9th to his Secre- 

 tary of Legation at Washington, that "I could not give the assurance 

 requested ; that a single United States ship of war on our own coasts 

 could ascertain facts; and that more would be menace, and likelv to 

 produce mischief." 



7. Messages by telegraph are necessarily short, and do not admit of 

 much explanation ; and I understand this message has given dissatis- 

 faction at Washington. Mr. Crampton, on his return to the United 

 States, for which he left Halifax in the " Medea " on the 14th, will 

 be able to enter into such explanations as may satisfy the United 

 States Government that I retain the same readiness to prevent col- 

 lisions between the countri as I have always evinced, and to again 



