DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 641 



coasts of the Dominion of Canada and of Newfoundland. Apart 

 from fishing and the incidents of fishing, it is conceded that the Brit- 

 ish Government has exclusive control, as against the United States, 

 of the customary and usual rights of navigation in the jurisdictional 

 waters of the British colonies. What we claim for ourselves, under 

 the rules of public law, and apart from treaties, we concede to others. 

 Rights of navigation are ordinarily separate from rights of fishing. 

 The Commonwealth of Massachusetts may control the right and lib- 

 erty of fishing on her coast, as against any Power other than the Gov- 

 ernment of Washington, but the right of navigation of the jurisdic- 

 tional waters of Massachusetts is always subject to the control of the 

 United States. The use of waters in respect of navigation is easily 

 distinguishable from the fruit of waters in respect to fishing or fish. 

 The United States have, so far as the British North American colo- 

 nies, and all the world, are concerned, the right of navigating and 

 fishing on the high seas, and in addition the right of fishing in certain 

 British territorial and jurisdictional waters. That right of fishing, 

 either inshore or offshore, should carry with it the natural and neces- 

 sary navigating incidents of the right. 



It may be conceded that, apart f om the right of American fisher- 

 men to take fish of all kinds within certain clearly defined British 

 waters. American deep-sea fishermen have no greater rights, by treaty 

 or public law. in British ports, than British fishermen have in Amer- 

 ican ports, so far as concerns revenue police, maritime tolls or taxes, 

 pilotage, lighthouses, quarantine, and all matters of ceremonial. 

 But the contention of the Privy Council of Canada is that if a vessel 

 bearing the registry, or enrolment, or licence of the Treasury depart- 

 ment (which alone makes her an American vessel) be licensed, 

 equipped and under contract with her seamen as an American fisher- 

 man on the open sea. she thereby comes under the ban of the treaty 

 of 1818, and is thereby abandoned by the nation whose flag is at her 

 mast-head, and is, by the treaty, excluded from an entrance into a 

 Canadian or Newfoundland port, excepting for one of the objects 

 enumerated in that treaty. Canadian ports are closed to her as to an 

 outcast. An American or a Canadian fishing vessel on the high seas, 

 and lawfully wearing the flag of its country, should be, if permitted 

 by its own Government to touch and trade, entitled to the same rights 

 of navigation and the same treatment in a foreign p^rt as any trading 



CANADIAN INHUMANITY. 



If the Privy Council and the Governor General of the Canadian 

 Dominion excluded all American vessels from all rights of touching 

 or trading in Canadian ports, excepting to obtain shelter, repairs. 

 wood or water, the contention would be logical and more tolerable; 

 but to every American vessel other than a fishing vessel, be the fisher- 

 man big or little a schooner, a sloop, a ship, or a steamer of large 

 tonnage Canadian ports seem to be wide open. If, however, she 

 be an American fishing vessel on the high seas, she cannot go into a 

 Canadian bay even to bury those of her dead who, in life, may have 

 been British" subjects with a domicile in Canada and a residence on 

 the land near the bay, and may have expressed a wish not to be com- 

 mitted to the sea, but to be la'in at rest by their kindred on the spot 

 which gave them birth. 



92909 S. Doc. 870, 61-3, vol 4 51 



