600 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



demonstration of force) with the rights of our fishermen guaranteed ' 

 by express treaty stipulations, and secured to them as I confidently 

 believe by the public commercial laws and regulations of the two 

 countries, and which are demanded by the laws of hospitality to 

 which all friendly civilised nations owe allegiance. Again I beg 

 that you will invite Her Majesty's Counsellors gravely to consider 

 the necessity of preventing the repetition of conduct on the part 

 of the Canadian officials which may endanger the peace of two kin- 

 dred and friendly nations. 



To this end, and to ensure to the inhabitants of the Dominion the 

 efficient protection of the exclusive rights to their inshore fisheries, 

 as provided by the Convention of 1818, as well as to prevent any 

 abuse of the privileges reserved and guaranteed by that instrument 

 for ever to the citizens -of the UniteS States engaging in fishing. 

 and responding to the suggestion made to you by the Earl of Iddes- 

 leigh in the month of September last that a modus vivendi should be 

 agreed upon between the two countries to prevent encroachment by 

 American fishermen upon the Canadian inshore fisheries, and 

 equally to secure them from all molestation when exercising only 

 their just and ancient rights, I now enclose the draft of a memo- 

 randum which you may propose to Lord Iddesleigh, and which, I 

 trust, will be found to contain a satisfactory basis for the solution 

 of existing difficulties and assist in securing an assured, just, honor- 

 able, and, therefore, mutually satisfactory settlement of the long 

 vexed question of the North Atlantic fisheries. 



I am encouraged in the expectation- that the propositions embodied 

 in the memorandum referred to will be acceptable to Her Majesty's 

 Government, because, in the month of April, 1866, Mr. Seward, then 

 Secretary of State, sent forward to Mr. Adams, at that time United 

 States' Minister in London, tlae draft of a protocol which in sub- 

 stance coincides with the first article of the proposal now sent to 

 you, as you will see by reference to Vol. 1 of the United States' Dip- 

 lomatic Correspondence for 1866. page 98 et se<[. 



I find that, in a published instruction to Sir F. Bruce, then Her 

 Majesty's Minister in the United States, under date of Ma} 7 llth, 

 1866, the Earl of Clarendon, at that time Her Majesty's Secretary of 

 State for Foreign Affairs, approved them, but declined to accept the 

 final proposition of Mr. Seward 's protocol, which is not contained in 

 the memorandum now forw r arded. 



Your attention is drawn to the great value of these three proposi- 

 tions, as containing a well-defined and practical interpretation of 

 Article I of the Convention of 1818. the enforcement of which co- 

 operatively by the two Governments, it may reasonably be hoped, will 

 efficiently remove those causes of irritation of which variant construc- 

 tions hitherto have been so unhappily fruitful. 



In proposing the adoption of a width of ten miles at the mouth as 

 a proper definition of the bays in which, except on certain specified 

 coasts, the fishermen of the United States are not to take fish, I have 

 followed the example furnished by France and Great Britain in 

 their Convention signed at Paris on the 2nd of August, 1839. _ This 

 definition was referred to and approved by Mr. Bates, the Umpire of 

 the Commission under the Treaty of 1853, in the case of the United 

 States' fishing schooner "Washington," and has since been notably 

 approved and adopted in the Convention signed at the Hague in 



