630 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



The Committee on Foreign Affairs, to which were referred the 

 President's Message^ of 8th December, 1886 (Ex. Doc. No. 19], and 

 the reply of the Secretary of the Treasury on 10th January, 1887 

 (Ex. Doc. No. 78), to the resolution of the House adopted on 14th 

 December, 1886, and House Bill 10241, submits the following re- 

 port: 



Your Committee has not only given to those communications the 

 very careful consideration which they deserve, but, during the last 

 session of the House, made diligent inquiry into the whole subject 

 of American fisheries. They were attendee! in the committee-room 

 by, among others, William Henry Trescot, Esq., and Charles Levi 

 Woodbury, Esq., of Boston. Mr. Woodbury represented all, or a 

 large majority of, New England owners of fishing vessels, and both 

 of the gentlemen favoured your committee with valuable opinions 

 on different phases of the important subject under consideration. 



Your Committee is of opinion that the rightful area of our "Amer- 

 ican fisheries " has been reduced, and the quantity of fish fresh, 

 dried, cured, or salted landed in the United States free of duty has 

 been diminished, by the conduct of the local officers in Canada. That 

 conduct has been not only in violation of treaty stipulations and of 

 international comity, but during the fishing season just passed has 

 been inhuman, as the Message of the President clearly establishes. 



THE TREATY OF 1783. 



The treaty of peace defined, in 1783, the area of American fisheries 

 which might, in that portion of the world, be prosecuted by Amer- 

 ican vessels. Its third article declares: 



AETICLE III. 



It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy 

 unmolested the BIGHT 



(1.) To take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and all other batiks of 

 Newfoundland ; 



(2.) Also in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence; 



376 (3.) And at all other places in the sea, where the inhabitants of both 

 countries used at any time heretofore to fish. And also that the inhabit- 

 ants of the United States shall have LIBERTY 



(1.) To take fish of every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as 

 British fishermen shall use (but not to dry or cure the same on that island) ; 



(2.) And also on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of His Britannic 

 Majesty's dominions in America ; 



(3.) And that the American fishermen shall have liberty to dry and cure 

 fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbours, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Mag- 

 dalen Islands and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but 

 so soon as the same, or either of them, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful 

 for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement without a previous 

 agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors or possessors of 

 the ground. 



When that treaty of peace was signed, the British Navigation Act 

 of Charles II, and other laws, prevented trade in foreign vessels with 

 the Anglo-American colonies. The corner-stone of that policy was a 

 monopoly of colonial trade for British vessels. The American col- 

 onies were founded in subservience to British commerce. A double 

 monopoly was established by England a monopoly of their whole 

 import, which is all to be from England ; a monopoly of their whole 

 export, which is to be sent nowhere but to Great Britain. The 



