606 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



the next fishing season, an arrangement based on mutual concessions, 

 and which would therefore (to use the language of your note) " con- 

 sist with the dignity, the interests, and the friendly relations of the 

 two countries." 



Her Majesty's Government cannot conceive that negotiations com- 

 menced with such an object and in such ar spirit could fail to be suc- 

 cessful; and they trust, therefore, that your Government will en- 

 deavour to obtain from Congress, which is about to assemble, the 

 necessary powers to enable them to make to Her Majesty's Govern- 

 ment some definite proposals for the negotiation of a mutually ad- 

 vantageous arrangement. 



I have, etc., IDDESLEIGH. 



No. <22&.1886, December 2: Letter from Mr. Phelps (United States 

 Minister at London) to Lord Iddesleigh (British Foreign Secre- 

 tary. 



LEGATION or THE UNITED STATES. 



London, December 2, 1886. 



MY LORD : Referring to the conversation I had the honour to hold 

 with your Lordship on the 20th November, relative to the request of 

 my Government that the owners of the David J. Adams may be 

 furnished with a copy of the original reports, stating the charges on 

 which that vessel was seized by the Canadian authorities, I desire 

 now to place before you in writing the grounds upon which this 

 request is preferred. 



It will be in the recollection of your Lordship, from the previous 

 correspondence relative to the case of the Adams, that the vessel was 

 first taken possession of for the alleged offence of having purchased 

 a small quantity of bait within the port of Digby, in Nova Scotia 1 , to 

 be used in lawful fishing. That later on a further charge was made 

 against the vessel of a violation of some Custom-House regulation, 

 which it is not claimed, so far as I can learn, was ever before in- 

 sisted on in a similar case. I think I have made it clear in my note 

 of the 2d of June last, addressed to Lord Rosebery, then Foreign 

 Secretary, that no Act of the English or of the Canadian Parliament 

 existed at the time of this seizure which legally justified it on the 

 ground of the purchase of bait, even if such an Act would have been 

 authorized by the Treaty of 1818. And it is a natural and strong in- 

 fluence, as I have in that communication pointed out, that the charge 

 of violation of Custom-House regulations was an afterthought, 

 brought forward in order to sustain proceedings commenced on a 



different charge and found untenable. 



362 In the suit that is now going on in the Admiralty Court at 

 Halifax for the purpose of condemning the vessel, still fur- 

 ther charges have been added. And the Government of Canada seek 

 to avail themselves of a clause in the Act of the Canadian Parlia- 

 ment of May 22, 1868, which is in these words : " In case a dispute 

 arises as to whether any seizure has or has not been legally made or 

 as to whether the person seizing was or was not authorised to seize 

 under this Act * * * the burden of proving the illegality of 

 the seizure shall be on the owner or claimant." 



I cannot quote this provision without saying that it is, in my judg- 

 ment, in violation of the principles of natural justice, as well as of 



