530 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



is very much aggravated by the motives which appear to have 

 prompted it 



I am instructed by my Government earnestly to protest against these 

 proceedings as wholly unwarranted by the Treaty of 1818, and alto- 

 gether inconsistent with the friendly relations hitherto existing be- 

 tween the United States and Her Majesty's Government; to request 

 that the " David J. Adams " and the other American fishing vessels 

 now under seizure in Canadian ports be immediately released; and 

 that proper orders may be issued to prevent similar proceedings in 

 the future; and I am also instructed to inform you that the United 

 States will hold Her Majesty's Government responsible for all losses 

 which may be sustained by American citizens in the dispossession of 

 their property growing out .of the search, seizure, detention, or sale 

 of their vessels lawfully within the territorial waters of British North 

 America. 



The real source of the difficulty that has arisen is well understood. 

 It is to be found in the irritation that has taken place among a por- 

 tion of the Canadian people on account of the termination, by the 

 United States' Government, of the Treaty of Washington on the 

 1st July last, whereby fish imported from Canada into the United 

 States, and which, so long as that Treaty remained in force, was ad- 

 mitted free, is now liable to the import duty provided by the General 

 Revenue Laws. And the opinion appears to have gained ground in 

 Canada that the United States may be driven, by harrassing and 

 annoying their fishermen, into the adoption of a new Treaty by 

 which Canadian fish shall be admitted free. 



It is not necessary to say that this scheme is likely to prove as 

 mistaken in policy as it is indefensible in principle. In terminating 

 the Treaty of Washington the United States were simply exercising 

 a right expressly reserved to both parties by the Treaty itself, and 

 of the exercise of which by either party neither can complain. They 

 will not be coerced by wanton injury into the making of a new one. 

 Nor would a negotiation that had its origin in mutual irritation be 

 promising of success. The question now is not what fresh Treaty 

 may or might be desirable, but what is the true and just construc- 

 tion, as between the two nations, of the Treaty that already exists. 



The Government of the United States, approaching this question 

 in a most friendly spirit, cannot doubt that it will be met by Her 

 Majesty's Government in the same spirit, and feels every confidence 

 that the action of Her Majesty's Government in the premises will be 

 such as to maintain the cordial relations between the two countries 

 that have so long happily prevailed. 

 I have, &c., 



(Sd.) E. J. PHELPS. 



317 No. 196. 1886, June 2: Letter from Earl of Rosebery to Sir 



L. S. S. West. 



(No. 24. Treaty.) FOREIGN OFFICE, 2nd June, 1886. 



SIR, The American Minister informed me to-day, in the course 

 of conversation, that he was at this moment preparing a statement 

 of the American contention with regard to the recent seizures under 



