DESPATCHES, EEPORTS, COREESPONDENCE, ETC. 613 



by those which led to the Treaty of 1871, and to the appointment of 

 the Halifax Commission, which however did not deal with the ques- 

 tion of the limits of the territorial waters of Canada. If Mr. Bayard 

 had simply reverted to the Adams-Clarendon Memorandum of 1866, 

 omitting the concluding paragraph to which objection was taken at 

 the time by Lord Clarendon and which as Mr. Bayard at page tw 

 of his letter points out is not contained in the Memorandum which 

 he now submits, I should have regarded more hopefully than I do at 

 this moment the prospect of an understanding being arrived at before 

 another fishing season commences. 



6. The first Article however of the Draft Proposal now submitted 

 by Mr. Bayard, while in other respects following closely the Adams- 

 Clarendon Memorandum differs from that memordandum, not only 

 in the omission of the final paragraph of the latter, but also in that 

 it adds (see Mr. Bayard's Draft, Article I, Subsection 1), the im- 

 portant stipulation that the bays and harbours from which Amer- 

 ican fishermen are in the future to be excluded save for the purposes 

 for which entrance into the bays and harbours is permitted by said 

 Act are hereby agreed to be taken to be such bays and harbours only 

 as are ten or less than ten miles in width. 



7. This reservation would involve the surrender of the exclusive 

 right of fishing in bays which have hitherto been regarded as be- 

 yond all question within the territorial waters of Canada, such, for 

 instance, as the right of fishing in the inner waters of the Bay of 

 Chaleurs at points 40 or 50 miles from its mouth, which, roughly 

 speaking, may be said to be less than 20 miles wide at its opening. 



8. I observe that Mr. Bayard in that part of his letter which refers 

 to this suggestion has cited Conventions entered into by France and 

 Great Britain in 1839 and subsequently by other European Powers 

 in support of his contention that there should be no exclusive rights 



of fishing in bays measuring more than ten miles at their open- 

 366 ing. It is, I think, obvious that local arrangements of this 



kind must be made with reference to the geographical pecu- 

 liarities of the coast which they affect, and to the local conditions 

 under which the fishing industry is pursued in different parts of the 

 world, and that it does not by any means follow that because the ten- 

 mile limit is applicable upon portions of the coast of the continent 

 of Europe, it is therefore applicable under the peculiar circumstances, 

 geographical and political, which are present in the case of the North 

 American continent. A reference to the action of the United States' 

 Government, and the admissions made by their statesmen in regard 

 to baj 7 s on the American coasts will, I think, strengthen this view 

 of the case. The award in regard to the Bay of Fundy, upon which 

 Mr. Bayard also relies in this part of his argument, was, I believe, 

 justified mainly upon the ground that one of the headlands which 

 formed this bay was in the Territory of the United States, and that it 

 could not therefore be regarded as a Canadian bay. 



9. The ad interim arrangement embodied in Article II, of the 

 memorandum prejudges in favour of the United States one of the 

 most important of the points which have been in dispute by de- 

 ciding adversely to Canada the construction which is to be placed 

 upon Imperial and Canadian Statutes, the proper interpretation of 

 which is at this moment the subject of litigation before the Canadian 



