DESPATCHES, EEPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 571 



He proceeds to state that that vessel "had violated no existing 

 law," although his letter cites the statute which she had directly and 

 plainly violated, and he states that she " had incurred no penalty that 

 any known statute imposed," while he has quoted at large the words 

 which inflict a penalty for the violation of that statute. He declares, 

 it seems impossible for him to escape the conclusion that " this and 

 similar seizures were made by the Canadian authorities for the de- 

 liberate purpose of harassing and embarrassing the American fishing 

 vessels in the pursuit of their lawful employment," and that the 

 injury is " very much aggravated by the motives which appear to 

 have prompted it." 



He professes to have found the real source of the difficulty in " the 

 irritation that has taken place among a portion of the Canadian peo- 

 ple, on account of the termination by the United States' Govern- 

 ment of the Washington Treaty," and in a desire to drive the United 

 States, by " harassing and annoying their fishermen, into the adoption 

 of a new Treaty, by which Canadian fish shall be admitted free," 

 and he declares that " this scheme is likely to prove as mistaken in 

 policy as it is unjustifiable in principle." 



He might, perhaps, have more accurately stated the real source of 



the difficulty had he suggested that the United States' author- 



341 ities have long endeavoured, and are still endeavouring, to 



obtain that which, by their solemn Treaty, they deliberately 



renounced, and to deprive the Canadian people of that which by 



Treaty the Canadian people lawfully acquired. 



The people of the British North American Provinces, ever since 

 the year 1818 (with the exception of those periods in which the 

 Reciprocity Treaty and the Fishery Clauses of the Washington 

 Treaty prevailed) have, at enormous expense, and with great diffi- 

 culty, been protecting their fisheries against encroachments by fisher- 

 men of the United States, carried on under every form and pretext, 

 and aided by such denunciations as Mr. Phelps has thought proper 

 to reproduce on this occasion. They value no less now than they 

 formerly did the rights which were secured to them by the Treaty, 

 and they are still indisposed to yield those rights, either to indi- 

 vidual aggression or official demands. 



The course of the Canadian Government since the rescission of the 

 Fishery Clauses of the Washington Treaty has been such as hardly 

 to merit the aspersions which Mr. Phelps has used. In order to 

 avoid irritation, and to meet a desire which the Government repre- 

 sented by Mr. Phelps professed to entertain for the settlement of all 

 questions which could re-awaken controversy, they conceded, for 

 six months, after the expiration of those clauses, all the benefits 

 which the United States' fishermen had enjoyed under them, al- 

 though during that interval the Government of the United States 

 enforced against Canadian fishermen the laws which those Fishery 

 Clauses had suspended. 



Mr. Bayard, the United States' Secretary of State, has made some 

 recognition of these facts in a letter which he is reported to have 

 written recently to the owners of the "David J. Adams." He says 



More than one year ago I sought to protect our citizens engaged in fishing 

 from results which might attend any possible misunderstanding between the 

 Governments of Great Britain and the United States, as to the measure of their 

 mutual rights and privileges in the territorial waters of British North America. 



