444 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



I feel it incumbent upon me, therefore, to give every possible weight, 

 every due weight, to whatever may be said on either side, and I 

 certainly have hitherto endeavoured to do so, and I have done so in 

 this case. I shall endeavour to pursue the same course, acting under 

 the same considerations, in the future. At the same time, I confess 

 to a great feeling of disappointment that such an important part of 

 the question connected with the settlement of the fisheries dispute 

 should apparently be removed, or partly removed, from the possible 

 consideration and adjudication of this tribunal, and I am bound to 

 say that my conviction of the intention of the parties to the Treaty 

 of Washington is that this was not their purpose at the time. 



I have listened with very great attention to the arguments pre- 

 sented on behalf of the United States, but I do not think that they 

 have correctly stated the position of the two parties at the time when 

 the Treaty of Washington was entered into. The history of this 

 case begins, as has been stated by counsel, as far back as 1783, but 

 by common consent the Convention of 1818 is the treaty by which 

 the fishery rights of the two countries have subsisted. Under the 

 Convention of 1818 certain things were forbidden to the United 

 States fishermen, and the United States renounced the right to do 

 anything except what they were permitted to do by the words of 

 that treaty. They renounced forever any liberty of taking, drying, 

 or curing fish, &c., " provided that the American fishermen shall be 

 permitted to enter the said bays or harbors for the purpose of shelter, 

 and of repairing damages therein, of purchasing wood and obtaining 

 water, and for no other purpose whatever." By the imperial Act 

 59, George the Third, Chapter 38, and by several colonial statutes, 

 restrictions and definitions were imposed or were established with 

 regard to offences arising from infringements of those privileges 

 conferred upon American citizens, though it has not been shown that 

 the seizures which took place prior to 1854 were for trading or for 

 obtaining supplies, or for any other benefit referred to in the mo- 

 tion, still it is undoubted that arising out of this legislation great 

 irritation arose between the two countries, and this resulted in the 

 adoption of what is known as the Reciprocity Treaty in 1854. That 

 the Reciprocity Treaty was understood to have removed all those 

 restrictions is unquestionably shown to be the case, to my mind, by 

 the action taken by Great Britain and the colonies when the treaty 

 came into force. 



Immediately afterward, all statutes which had operated against 

 the American fishermen were suspended, and the greatest possible 

 freedom of intercourse existed during the continuation of that treaty. 

 At the termination of the Reciprocity Treaty, and in support of the 

 view that it was supposed to have given those privileges, we find the 

 whole of these enactments revived, and we also find that subse- 

 quently more stringent statutes were passed by the Dominion of 

 Canada in this relation. Now, it is important in the history of this 

 case to consider what effect was produced by those statutes; and we 

 find in a most important public document, that is the annual message 

 of President Grant to Congress, in 1870, that this legislation on the 

 part of the colonies was made the subject of the gravest possible 

 complaint. The President states that: 



The course pursued by the Canadian authorities toward the fishermen of the 

 United States during the last season has not been marked by a friendly feeling. 

 By the first article of the Convention of 1818, between Great Britain and the 



