DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 441 



port for any reason whatever, unless some commercial regulation be- 

 tween the United States and Great Britain forbade them. With 

 regard to the construction that is to be placed upon the articles of the 

 Treaty of 1871, Mr. Thomson seems very much surprised at the con- 

 struction we have put upon it. Here is the arrangement. (Quotes 

 from Convention of 1818 and Treaty of 1871.) 



Does that take away the prohibition? Surely if it had been in- 

 tended to remove that prohibition it would have been stated. In 

 addition to your right to fish on certain coasts and enter certain 

 harbours only for wood and water, that treaty says you shall have 

 the right " to take fish of every kind, except shell-fish, on the sea- 

 coasts and shores and in the bays, harbours, and creeks of the 

 Province of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and the 

 Colony of Prince Edward Island and of the several islands thereto 

 adjacent, without being restricted to any distance from the shore, 

 with permission to land upon the said coasts and shores and islands, 

 and also upon the Magdalen Islands, for the purpose of drying their 

 nets and curing their fish." " Drying their nets and curing their 

 fish." That is all ; that is the whole additional treaty privilege, and 

 I can see no power of construction in this Commission by which it 

 can add to treaty stipulation the foreign words " and buy ice, bait, 

 supplies, and tranship." . . . 



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263 [Mr. Dana, in the same interest, said in part, as follows : ] 



******* 



... The only question of late has been whether Great Britain 

 has the right, without any treaty, to exclude us from three miles of 

 the coast. That was Mr. Adams's famous argument with Earl 

 Bathurst. We said in the treaty of 1818 that, as a right, we no 

 longer claimed it. That is the meaning of the treaty that having 

 claimed it as a right inherent in us, either because we did not lose 

 it at the time of the Revolution, or from the nature of fisheries, or 

 on some other ground, we no longer claimed it as a right which can- 

 not be taken away from us but at the point of the bayonet. But 

 while we say we will not go within the three miles to fish without 

 permission, it must not be held that vessels cannot go there for 

 shelter and repairs and for wood and water, but may be put under 

 such regulations as will prevent us from doing anything further. 

 It is entirely a matter for Great Britain to determine what regula- 

 tions we should be placed under, in those respects, and she has seen 

 fit to make none. . . . 



******* 



. . . Suppose I were to concede that we had no right to buy 

 bait or ice or supplies, or tranship cargoes anywhere on these coasts, 

 certainly that ends the argument, because we cannot be called upon 

 to pay for something which we have not got. If the proper construc- 

 tion of the treaty of 1818 is that fishermen have no right as fishermen 

 and by the general law, irrespective of the consent of the Crown, to 

 buy bait, ice, and supplies, and tranship cargoes in British dominions, 

 then I concede that, as regards American fishermen fishing within 

 the three-mile limit, we have not those rights. Why are we, then, 

 in the exercise of them ? In that case, by the concession of the Crown. 



