408 APPENDIX TO BRITISH 



asserting the abstract right of the British claim, says : " It seems 

 difficult to deny that Great Britain may ground her refusal upon 

 strict law, but it is equally difficult to deny, first, that in doing so 

 she exercises harshly an extreme and hard law; secondly, that her 

 conduct with respect to the navigation of the St. Lawrence is in 

 glaring and discreditable inconsistency with her conduct with 

 respect to the navigation of the Mississippi. On the ground that 

 she possessed a small domain, in which the Mississippi took its rise, 

 she insisted on the right to navigate the entire volume of its waters. 

 On the ground that she possesses both banks of the St. Lawrence, 

 where it disembogues itself into the sea, she denies to the United 

 States the right of navigation, though about one-half of the waters 

 of the lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Superior, and the whole of 

 Lake Michigan, through which the river flows, are the property of 



the United States." 



243 The whole nation is interested in securing cheap transporta- 

 tion from the agricultural States of the west to the Atlantic 

 seaboard. To the citizens of those States it secures a greater return 

 for their labour ; to the inhabitants of the seaboard it affords cheaper 

 food; to the nation, an increase in the annual surplus of wealth. It 

 is hoped that the Government of Great Britain will see the justice 

 of abandoning the narrow and inconsistent claim to which her 

 Canadian Provinces have urged her adherence. 



No. 154. 1870, December %7 : Report of Committee of the Privy 



Council of Canada. 



(Confidential.) 



The Committee of the Privy Council, while engaged in the consid- 

 eration of a Report from the Minister of Marine and fisheries, on 

 various Despatches on the subject of the regulations for protecting 

 the British fisheries in North America, which were referred to them 

 by your Excellency for their advice, have learned, with considerable 

 surprise, that the conduct of the Canadian Government with regard 

 both to the protection of those fisheries and to the navigation of the 

 River St. Lawrence, has been animadverted on by the President of 

 the United States in his recent Message to Congress. 



It is, in the opinion of the Committee of the Privy Council, a 

 significant fact that the President of the United States has in his 

 late Message adopted the unusual course of animadverting on the 

 proceedings of Canada, which is styled, " this semi-independent 

 Dominion," instead of remonstrating through the usual diplomatic 

 channels against any acts committed by Canadian authorities in 

 violation of the Treaty of 1818, under which the United States re- 

 nounced all right on the part of their citizens to fish in British waters, 

 with certain exceptions, which have not led to controversy. 



Such a course is obviously calculated to produce uneasiness in the 

 minds of Her Majesty's subjects in Great Britain, who having com- 

 paratively little interest in the British American fisheries, and a very 

 deep interest in maintaining friendly relations with the United 

 States must have experienced considerable anxiety on learning, 



