DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 521 



graphed, I hoped to be in a better position for giving an answer. Mr. 

 Phelps also touched on the seizures of these ships, and 1 said that 

 the legality of that would be decided in a Court of Law, and Mr. 

 Phelps objected that it would be a Dominion Court of Law and not 

 an Imperial Court. I replied that an appeal would lie to the Courts 

 in this country, and Mr. Phelps pointed out that that procedure 

 would be expensive; but I reminded him again that it was not our 

 fault that we had been thrown on the provisions of the Treaty of 1818. 

 I am, &c., 



(Sd.) ROSEBERY. 



No. 193. 1886, May 29: Letter from Mr. Bayard to Sir L.S.S. West. 



DEPARTMENT or STATE, 

 Washington, 29th May, 1886. 



SIR, I have just received an official imprint of House of Com- 

 mons Bill No. 136, now pending in the Canadian Parliament, entitled 

 "An Act further to amend the Act respecting fishing by foreign ves- 

 sels," and am informed that it has passed the House and is now 

 pending in the Senate. 



This Bill proposes the forcible search, seizure and forfeiture of any 

 foreign vessel within any harbour in Canada, or hovering within 

 three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks or harbours in 

 Canada, where such vessel has entered such waters for any purpose 

 not permitted by the laws of nations, or by Treaty or Convention, or 

 by any law of the United Kingdom or of Canada now in force. 



I hasten to draw your attention to the wholly unwarranted pro- 

 position of the Canadian authorities, through their local agents, 

 arbitrarily to enforce, according to their own construction, the pro- 

 visions of any Convention between the United States and Great 

 Britain, and, by the interpolation of language not found in any such 

 Treaty, and by interpretation not claimed or conceded by either party 

 to such Treaty, to invade and destroy the commercial^rights and 

 privileges of citizens of the United States under and by virtue of 

 Treaty stipulation with Great Britain and Statutes in that behalf 

 made and provided. 



I have also been furnished with a copy of Circular No. 371, pur- 

 porting to be from the Customs Department at Ottawa, dated 7th 

 May, 1886, and to be signed by J. Johnson, Commissioner of Customs, 

 assuming to execute the provisions of the Treaty between the United 

 States and Great Britain, concluded 20th October, 1818; and printed 

 copies of a " Warning," purported to be issued by George E. Foster, 

 Minister of Marine and Fisheries, dated at Ottawa, 5th March, 1886, 

 of a similar tenor, although capable of unequal results in its execution. 



Such proceedings I conceive to be flagrantly violative of the reci- 

 procal commercial privileges to which citizens of the United States 

 are lawfully entitled under Statutes of Great Britain and the well 

 defined and publicly proclaimed authority of both countries, besides 

 being in respect of the existing Conventions between the two coun- 

 tries an assumption of jurisdiction entirely unwarranted, and which 

 is wholly denied by the United States. 



In the interest of the maintenance of peaceful and friendly rela- 

 tions, I give you my earliest information on this subject, adding that 



