512 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



The Acts passed by the provinces now forming Canada and also 

 by the Parliament of Canada are to the same effect, and may be said 

 to be merely declaratory of the law as established by the Imperial 

 statute. 



(3.) The authority of the Parliaments of the provinces, and, after 

 confederation, the authority of the Parliament of Canada, to make 

 enactments to enforce the provisions of the convention, and likewise 

 the authority of Canadian Officers to enforce those Acts, rests on well 

 known constitutional principles. Those Parliaments existed, and the 

 Parliament of Canada now exists, by the authority of the Parliament 

 of Great Britain, which is one of the " nations " referred to by Mr. 

 Bayard as the " contracting parties." The Colonial statutes have re- 

 ceived the sanction of the British Sovereign, who, and not the nation, 

 is actually the party with whom the United States made the con- 

 vention. 



The officers who are engaged in enforcing the Acts of Canada, or 

 the Laws of the Empire, are Her Majesty s officers, although their 

 authority may have been conveyed through the medium of Her Maj- 

 esty's Governor-General. 



The jurisdiction thus exercised cannot therefore be properly de- 

 scribed in the language used by Mr. Bayard as a "supposed," and 

 therefore questionable, " delegation of jurisdiction by the Imperial 

 Government of Great Britain." 



Her Majesty governs in Canada as well as in Great Britain; the 

 officers in Canada are Her Majesty's officers, and the Statutes of 

 Canada are Her Majesty's Statutes passed on the advice of Her Par- 

 liament sitting in Canada. 



It is, therefore, an error to conceive that, because Great Britain 

 and the United States were, in the first instance, the contracting 

 parties to the Treaty of 1818, no question arising under that Treaty 

 can be " responsibly dealt with," either by the Parliament or by the 

 authorities of the Dominion of Canada. 



The undersigned has further to observe, with regard to this conten- 

 tion of Mr. Bayard, that in the proceedings which have recently been 

 taken for the protection of the Fisheries, no attempt has been made to 

 put any special or novel interpretation on the Treaty of 1818. The 

 seizures of the fishing vessels have been made in order to enforce the 

 explicit provisions of that Treaty, the clear and long established pro- 

 visions of the Imperial Statute, and of the Statutes of Canada. 



The proceedings which have been taken to carry out the law of 

 the Empire in this regard, are the same as those which have been 

 taken, from time to time, during the period in which the Convention 

 has been in force, and the seizures of vessels have been made under 

 process of the Imperial Court of Vice-Admiralty established in one 

 of the provinces of Canada. 



Mr. Bayard's statement that " the discussion prior to the conclusion 

 of the Treaty of Washington in 1871 was productive of a substantial 

 agreement between the two countries as to the existence and limit of 

 the three marine miles within the line of which, upon the regions 

 defined in the Treaty of 1818. it should not be lawful for American 

 fishermen to take, cure, or dry fish," does not appear to the under- 

 signed to have any important bearing on the subject under consid- 

 eration. 



