DESPATCHES, REPORTS, COERESPONDENCE, ETC. 449 



time of war two foreign ships could sail up that Bristol Channel and 

 fight out their battle to their own content, on the ground that they 

 did not go within three miles of the shore. I think it would have 

 been preposterous to say that a foreign vessel could have sailed up 

 the center of that channel, and defied the fleets and armies of Great 

 Britain, and all her custom-house cutters, on the ground that she was 

 flying the American or the French flag, and the deck was a part of 

 the soil under that flag. Well, it was a question of political geog- 

 raphy, not of natural geography. It was a question of its own 

 circumstances. It was decided to be a part of the realm of Great 

 Britain. I do not know that anybody can object to the decision. 



No. 165. 1877, December 13: Extract from Report Mr. D wight 

 Foster (Agent of the United States) to the United States Secre- 

 tary of State. 



******* 



During the progress of the evidence offered for Her Britannic 

 Majesty, it became obvious that a very large, if not the greater, part 

 of the British claim was based upon alleged advantages of a com- 

 mercial character, which, whether valuable or not, were certainly 

 not secured to the citizens of the United States by the articles of the 

 treaty of 1871. 



I therefore, on the 1st of September, made the following motion, 

 for the purpose of excluding these pretended advantages from con- 

 sideration, and thus relieving us from the necessity of swelling an 

 already enormous volume of testimony by evidence on points clearly 

 irrelevant to the true issue : 



The counsel and Agent of the United States ask the honorable Commissioners 

 to rule and declare that it is not competent for this Commission to award any 

 compensation for commercial intercourse between the two countries, and that 

 the advantages resulting from the practice of purchasing bait, ice, supplies, &c., 

 and from being allowed to transship cargoes in British waters, do not constitute 

 a foundation for award of compensation, and shall be wholly excluded from 

 the consideration of this tribunal. 



No. 166. 1878, February 11: Letter from Governor Sir J. Glover 

 of Newfoundland to the Earl of Carnarvon (British Colonial Sec- 

 retary) . 



GOVERNMENT HOUSE, February 11, 1878. 



MY LORD, I regret to have to report the destruction of an American 

 seine by our fishermen in Fortune Bay on the 6th ultimo, the news of 

 which only reached me through a cable telegram from London on the 

 4th instant. 



2. On receipt of this intelligence I at once caused an inquiry to be 

 instituted to ascertain the truth of the report, but the result of the 

 inquiry has not yet reached me from Fortune Bay. I have the hon- 

 our to inclose the only information I have as yet been able to obtain, 

 viz., the deposition of the master of a vessel who was present at the 

 time. 



92909 S. Doc. 870, 61-3, yol 4 39 



