678 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 







It is not to be expected that after having earnestly insisted 

 404 upon the necessity of a strict maintenance of these treaty rights, 

 and upon the respect due by foreign vessels, while in Canadian 

 waters, to the municipal legislation by which all vessels resorting to 

 those waters are governed, in the absence moreover of any decision 

 of a legal tribunal, to show that there has been any straining of the 

 law in those cases in which it has been put in operation, the Canadian 

 Government will suddenly and without the justification supplied by 

 any new facts or arguments withdraw from a position taken up de- 

 liberately, and by doing so, in effect, plead guilty to the whole of the 

 charges of oppression, inhumanity, and bad taith which, in lan- 

 guage wholly unwarranted by the circumstances of the case, have 

 been made against it by the public men of the United States. 



Such a surrender on the part of Canada would involve the aban- 

 donment of a valuable portion of the national inheritance of the 

 Canadian people, who would certainly visit with just reprobation 

 those who were guilty of so serious a neglect of the trust committed 

 to their charge. 



The Minister, while, however, objecting thus strongly to the pro- 

 posal as it now stands, considers that the fact of such a proposal hav- 

 ing been made may be regarded as affording an opportunity which 

 has, up to the present time, not been offered for an amicable compari- 

 son of the views entertained by your Excellency's Government and 

 that of the United States, and he desires to point out that Mr. Bay- 

 ard's proposal, though quite inadmissible, in so far as the conditions 

 attached to it are concerned, appears to be, in itself, one which de- 

 serves respectful examination by your Excellency's advisers. The 

 main principle of that proposal is that a mixed Commission should be 

 appointed for the purpose of determining the limits of those terri- 

 torial waters within which, subject to the stipulations of the Treaty 

 of 1818, the exclusive right of fishing belongs to Great Britain. 



The Minister cordially agrees with Mr. Bayard in believing that a 

 determination of those limits would, whatever might be the future 

 commercial relations between Canada and the United States, either 

 in respect of the fishing industry, or in regard to the interchange of 

 other commodities, be extremely desirable, and he believes that your 

 Excellency's Government will be found ready to co-operate with that 

 of the United States in effecting such a settlement. 



Holding this view the Minister is of opinion that Mr. Bayard was 

 justified in reverting to the precedent afforded by the negotiations 

 which took place upon this subject between Great Britain and the 

 United States after the expiration of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, 

 and he concurs with him in believing that the memorandum communi- 

 cated by Mr. Adams in 1866 to the Earl of Clarendon affords a valu- 

 able indication of the lines upon which a negotiation directed to the 

 same points might now be allowed to proceed. 



The Minister has already referred to some of the criticisms which 

 were taken at the time by Lord Clarendon to the terms of the memo- 

 randum. Mr. Bayard has himself pointed out that its concluding 

 paragraph, to which Lord Clarendon emphatically objected, is not 

 contained in the memorandum now forwarded by him. Mr. Bayard, 

 appears, however, while taking credit for this omission, to have lost 

 sight of the fact that the remaining articles of the draft memorandum 

 contain stipulations not less open to objection and calculated to affect 



