676 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



To make the language conform correctly to the Convention of 



1818, several other verbal alterations which need not be enumerated 



here, would be necessary in order to prevent imaginary 



403 distinctions being drawn hereafter between the Convention of 



1818 and any agreement of later date which may be arrived at. 



The Minister moreover suggests that inasmuch as Mr. Bayard has 

 from time to time denied the force and authority of the customs, har- 

 bour shipping and police laws of Canada, it may be well in order to 

 remove the possibility of misunderstanding on the part of his Gov- 

 ernment, to insert a proviso expressly recognising the validity of 

 such enactments. 



The proviso in Article I, in which it is stipulated that any arrange- 

 ment which may be arrived at by the Commission shall not go into 

 effect until it has been confirmed by Great Britain and the United 

 States should provide for confirmation by the Parliament of Canada. 



2. The Minister submits that Article II of the proposed arrange- 

 ment, is, in his opinion, entirely inadmissible. It would suspend the 

 operations of the Statutes of Great Britain and Canada, and of the 

 Provinces now constituting Canada, not only as to the various 

 offences connected with fishing, but as to customs, harbours, and 

 shipping, and would give to the fishing vessels of the United States 

 privileges in Canadian ports, which are not enjoyed by vessels of 

 any other class, or of any other nation : such vessels would for exam- 

 ple, be free from, the duty of reporting at the customs on entering 

 a Canadian harbour, and no safeguard could be adopted to prevent 

 infraction of the custom laws by any vessel asserting the character 

 of a fishing vessel of the United States. 



Instead of allowing to such vessels merely the restricted privileges 

 reserved by the Convention of 1818, it would give them greater 

 privileges than are enjoyed at the present time by any vessels in any 

 part of the world. 



It must, moreover, be borne in mind that should no " definitive 

 arrangement," such as is looked forward .to in the proposal, be arrived 

 at, these extraordinary concessions, although applied for pending 

 such a definitive arrangement, might remain in operation for an 

 indefinite period, and that the article would be taken for all time 

 to come as indicating the true interpretation of the Convention of 

 1818, although the interpretation placed upon that Convention by 

 the article is as a matter of fact diametrically opposed to the construc- 

 tion which has heretofore been insisted upon by successive Cana- 

 dian Governments. 



The Minister further considers it his duty to point out that the 

 article is beyond the powers of the Imperial Government, which can- 

 not thus suspend or repeal Canadian laws. 



3. As to Article III the Minister submits that it is entirely inad- 

 missible. It proposes that Her Majesty's Courts in Canada shall, 

 without any show of reason, be deprived of their jurisdiction, and 

 would vest "that jurisdiction in a tribunal not bound by legal prin- 

 ciples, but clothed with supreme authority to decide on most impor- 

 tant rights of the Canadian people. 



It would be a disagreeable novelty to the people of Her Majesty's 

 Canadian Dominions to find that any of their rights or the rights of 

 their country as a whole, were to be submitted to the adjudication of 

 two naval officers, one of them belonging to a foreign country, who, 



