516 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



tion of its provisions can be shown to have become manifestly in- 

 equitable and unfair, the utmost that goodwill and fair dealing can 

 suggest is that the terms should be reconsidered, and a new compact 

 entered into; but this the Government of the United States does not 

 appear to have considered desirable. 



It is not, however, the case that the Convention of 1818 affected 

 only the inshore fisheries of the British Provinces ; it was framed with 

 the object of affording a complete and exclusive definition of the 

 rights and liberties which the fishermen of the United States were 

 thenceforward to enjoy in following their vocation, so far as those 

 rights could be affected by facilities for access to the shores or waters 

 of the British Provinces, or for intercourse with their people. It is, 

 therefore, no undue expansion of the scope of that Convention to 

 interpret strictly those of its provisions by which such access is 

 denied, except to vessels requiring it for the purposes specifically 

 described. An undue expansion of the scope of the Convention 

 would, upon the other hand, certainly take place, if under cover of 

 its provisions, or of any agreements relating to general commercial 

 intercourse which may have since been made, permission were ac- 

 corded to United States fishermen to resort habitually to the harbours 

 of the Dominion, not for the sake of seeking safety for their vessels, 

 or of avoiding risk to human life, but in order to use those harbours 

 as a general base of operations from which to prosecute and organize, 

 with greater advantage to themselves, the industry in which they 

 are engaged. The undersigned, therefore, cannot concur in Mr. 

 Bayard's contention, that "to prevent the purchase of bait, or any 

 other supply needed for deep sea fishing," " would be to expand the 

 Convention to objects wholly beyond the purview, scope, and intent " 

 of the Treaty, and to " give to it an effect never contemplated." 



Mr. Bayard suggests that the possession by a fishing vessel of a per- 

 mit to " touch and trade " should give her a right to enter Canadian 

 ports for other than the purposes named in the Treaty, or, in other 

 words, should give her perfect immunity from the provisions of the 

 Treaty. This would amount to a practical repeal of the Treat} 7 , be- 

 cause it would enable a United States Collector of Customs, by issuing 

 a license, originally only intended for purposes of domestic Customs 

 regulation, to give exemption from the Treaty to every United 

 States fishing vessel. The observation that similar vessels under the 

 British flag have the right to enter the ports of the United States for 

 the purchase of supplies, loses its force when it is remembered that 

 the Treaty of 1818 contained no restrictions on British vessels, and no 

 renunciation of any privileges in regard to them. 



Mr. Bayard states that in the proceedings prior to the Treaty of 

 1818, the British Commissioners proposed that United States fishing 

 vessels should be excluded " from carrying also merchandise," but 

 that this proposition " being resisted by the American negotiators 

 was abandoned," and goes on to say, " This fact would seem clearly to 

 indicate that the business of fishing did not then and does not now 

 disqualify vesesls from also trading in the regular ' ports 

 309 of entry.' " A reference to the proceedings alluded to will 

 show that the proposition mentioned had reference only to 

 United States vessels visiting those portions of the coast of Labrador 

 and Newfoundland on which the United States fishermen had been 

 granted the right to fish, and to land for drying and curing fish, and 



