436 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



effect of these provisions, to employ an illustration, is this: If the 

 Government of Newfoundland chooses to prohibit its own people from 

 exporting fish for bait, in which export, it is testified, they carry on 

 a trade of 40,000 or 50,000 annually with St. Pierre, it can also, by 

 the same law, prohibit United States citizens from carrying away 



such articles, but not otherwise. As I understand the effect of 

 260 this commercial clause, whatever may be exported from the 



British Provinces by anybody by their own citizens, by 

 Frenchmen, or by citizens of other nations at peace with them may 

 also be exported by citizens of the United States on the same terms, 

 as to export duty, that apply to the rest of the world. If, then, New- 

 foundland sees fit to conclude that the sale of bait fish: caplin, or 

 herring, or squid and ice is injurious to its interests, and therefore 

 forbid its export altogether, that prohibition may extend to the citi- 

 zens of the United States ; but the citizens of the United States have 

 there the same privileges with the rest of the world ; they cannot be 

 excluded from the right to buy and take bait out of the harbours of 

 Newfoundland, unless the rest of the world is also so excluded. How- 

 ever, this is of remote consequence, and perhaps of no consequence, to 

 the subject under discussion. 



The material thing is this: Under the treaty of Washington we 

 cannot prevent such legislation. The treaty of Washington confers 

 upon us no right whatever to buy anything in Her Majesty's domin- 

 ions. The treaty of Washington is a treaty relating to fishing and 

 to nothing else. . . 



******* 



. . . You will observe that the United States renounced the right to 

 the inshore fisheries in 1818, but these are regained by the provisions 

 of the 18th Article of the treaty of Washington. The United States 

 retained the right of resorting to British ports for shelter, repairs, 

 and purchasing wood and water, subject to such regulations as would 

 prevent their citizens drying fish on the shore ; and the object of this 

 article is to add to the inshore fisheries the right to dry nets and cure 

 fish on the shore, and this superadded right is limited to parts of the 

 coast where it does not interfere with private property, or the similar 

 rights of British fishermen. Now, what argument can be constructed 

 from provisions like these to infer the creation of an affirmative com- 

 mercial privilege or the right to purchase supplies and tranship 

 cargoes, I am at a loss to imagine. It seems to me that if I were re- 

 quired to maintain that under the right conceded to dry nets and cure 

 fish on unoccupied and unowned shores and coasts, taking care not 

 to interfere with British fishermen, couched in language like that, 

 the United States had obtained a right to buy what the policy of the 

 British Government might forbid to be sold, I should not have one 

 word to say for myself. I cannot conceive how a commercial privi- 

 lege can be founded upon that language, or how you can construct 

 an argument upon that language in support of its existence. . . 

 ******* 



[On behalf of Canada Mr. Thomson said in part as follows : ] 

 ******* 



. . . The framers of the Convention of 1818 were very cautious 

 as to its wording; the framers of the treaty of Washington had that 

 convention before them, and it must, therefore, I think, be fairly 

 assumed that if it had been the intention of either of the High Con- 



