640 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



confer upon United States -fishermen ' privileges of trading or of ship- 

 ping men ' in Canadian ports." And, finally, a committee of the 

 Canadian Privy Council declared, in effect, on November 24, 1886, 

 that an American vessel, manned, equipped, and prepared for taking 

 fish, has not the liberty of commercial intercourse in Canadian ports, 

 such as are applicable to other regularly registered foreign merchant 

 vessels. 



Such an interpretation of the present legal effect of the first article 

 of the treaty of 1818, is, in the opinion of your Committee, so pre- 

 posterous, in view of concerted laws of comity and good neighbour- 

 hood enacted by the two countries, that, had it not been formally put 

 forth by the Dominion of Canada, would not deserve serious consid- 

 eration by intelligent persons. If all the stipulations of 1818 re- 

 straining American fishermen are now in full force (which may well 

 be doubted), your Committee concedes that American fishermen have 

 no more liberty to take fish or to dry or cure fish in what has been 

 described as portion B, than a British fisherman has to take fish in 

 the inner harbour of New York, and to dry or cure fish in the City 

 Hall Park of that city. But the liberty of an American fisherman to 

 take, dry, and cure fish in portion A, in common with British sub- 

 jects, is as complete and absolute as is the right of citizens of New 

 York to fish in the waters of the Hudson River. The treaty of 1818 

 furnishes no more excuse for the exclusion of a deep-sea fisherman 

 from the port of Halifax, or any other open port of the Dominion of 

 Canada, than for the exclusion by the secretary of the Treasury of a 

 deep-sea fisherman from entering the port of New York according 

 to the forms of law, and for the ordinary purposes of trade and com- 

 merce. The exclusion, if made, must be justified, if at all, for other 



reasons than any yet given by Canada. 

 382 Keeping in mind the words of the third article of the treaty 



of peace in 1783, which not only acknowledged the right of 

 the united American colonies to fish in the open sea as freely as to 

 navigate the open sea, but also acknowledged and stipulated for the 

 liberty to " take fish of every kind " on coasts, bays, and creeks of all 

 of His Britannic Majesty's dominions in America, it will be dis- 

 cerned that this contention of the Privy Council of Canada makes of 

 the renunciation by the United States, in 1818, of the liberty there- 

 tofore enjoyed or claimed by American fishermen within three miles 

 of certain carefully defined coasts, bays, creeks, or harbours, not 

 merely a renunciation of specific local liberty, but a forsaking, a 

 relinquishment a surrender, an abandonment by the United States of 

 other rights held up to 1818. 



CERTAIN CANADIAN COASTS ARE SUBSERVIENT TO AMERICAN FISHERMEN. 



The treaty of 1783 diminished and impaired, and was intended to 

 diminish and impair, British sovereignty over the remaining British 

 colonies of North America. The United States had conquered full 

 and complete dominion over the right of fishing in the jurisdictional 

 waters of each of the thirteen United States, but the British colonies 

 did not emerge from the negotiations of the treaty of peace with simi- 

 lar dominion over the fisheries on the shores and coasts of the thirteen 

 recognised States. British fishermen cannot fish on the coasts of 

 Massachusetts, but American fishermen can fish on certain shores and 



