674 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



The Minister has further to call the attention of your Excellency 

 to the fact that there is no foundation whatever for the following 

 statement in the concluding part of Mr. Bayard's letter : 



The numerous seizures made have been of vessels quietly at anchor in estab- 

 lished ports of entry, under charges which up to this day have not been 

 402 particularised sufficiently to allow of intelligent defence. Not one has 

 been condemned after trial and hearing, but many have been fined with- 

 out hearing or judgment for technical violation of alleged commercial regula- 

 tions, although all commercial privileges have been simultaneously denied to 

 them. 



The Minister observes in relation to this paragraph that the sei- 

 zures of which Mr. Bayard complains have been made under circum- 

 stances which have from time to time been fully reported to your 

 Excellency and communicated to Her Majesty's Government, and 

 upon grounds which have been distinctly and unequivocally stated 

 in every case ; that, although the nature of the charges has been inva- 

 riably specified and duly announced, those charges have not in any 

 case been answered; that ample opportunity has in every case been 

 afforded for a defence to be submitted to the executive authorities, 

 but that no defence has been offered, beyond the mere denial of the 

 right of the Canadian Government; that the courts of the various 

 provinces have been open to the parties said to have been aggrieved, 

 but that not one of them has resorted to these courts for redress. To 

 this it must be added, that the illegal acts which are characterised by 

 Mr. Bayard as " technical violations of alleged commercial regula- 

 tions," involved breaches, in most of the cases not denied by the per- 

 sons who had committed them, of established commercial regulations, 

 which, far from being specially directed or enforced against citizens 

 of the United States, are obligatory upon all vessels (including those 

 of Canada herself) which resort to the harbours of the British North 

 American coast. 



With regard to the proposal for a settlement which accompanies 

 Mr. Bayard's letter, the minister submits the following observations : 



ARTICLE I. The minister observes that, in referring to this article 

 Mr. Bayard states that he is " encouraged in the expectation that the 

 propositions embodied in the memorandum will be acceptable to Her 

 Majesty's Government, because, in the month of April, 1866, Mr. 

 Seward, then Secretary of State, sent forward to Mr. Adams, at that 

 time United States' Minister in London, the draft of a Protocol, 

 which, in substance, coincides with the first article of the proposal," 

 now submitted. In regard to this statement, it is to be remarked 

 that Article 1 of the Memorandum, although, no doubt, to some ex- 

 tent resembling the Protocol submitted, in 1866, by Mr. Adams to 

 Lord Clarendon, contains several most important departures from 

 the terms of that Protocol. These departures consist not only in 

 guch comparatively unimportant alterations as the substitution in 

 line 1 of the word " establish " for the word " define," without any 

 apparent necessity for the change, and in other minor alterations in 

 the text, but also in such grave changes as that which is involved in 

 the interpolation in section 1 of the important passage, in which it is 

 stipulated: "that the bays and harbours from which American ves- 

 sels are in future to be excluded save for the purposes for which en- 

 trance into bays and harbours is permitted by said Article, are 

 hereby agreed to be taken to be such bays and harbours as are ten 



