680 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



act of barbarism fit only for savages. It would be as contemptible 

 and odious as for a Government, conducting a naval war to fire, in 

 these days, on a hospital-ship, attested by her colour and flag, and 

 filled exclusively with the sick, wounded, or dying, their surgeons 

 and nurses. Such hospital vessels are now, by the common consent 

 of civilized nations, as I am told, even more perfectly and completely 

 neutralized than are hospitals and tents on land over which floats 

 the yellow flag. It is impossible not to recognize how justly my 

 colleague, Mr. Bayard, has portrayed the inhumanity and brutality 

 with which certain Canadian officials treated defenseless American 

 fishermen during the last summer, even those who had gone out of 

 their way to rescue Canadian sailors, and, having entered a Canadian 

 bay to safely land those they had saved, attempted to procure food 

 to sustain their own lives. 



It is true that we complain of and denounce, as in violation of the 

 treaty of 1818, the " restrictions " enforced by Canadian statutes and 

 officials under the pretence of preventing our fishermen from "tak- 

 ing, drying, or curing fish," in the prohibited Canadian bays or 

 harbors, but those " restrictions " are not complained of or de- 

 nounced because restricting commercial privileges. The complaint 

 and denunciation are because the "restrictions" violate the fishing 

 rights secured to our fishermen by the treaties. 



I am advised, and concede, that up to President Jackson's proclama- 

 tion of October 5, 1830, set forth on page 817 of the fourth volume 

 of the United States Statutes at Large, this Government had not 

 even commercial privileges for its vessels in Canadian ports. We 

 had such privileges as colonists; we lost them as colonists; we re- 

 gained them in 1830 by an arrangement of legislation finally con- 

 certed with Great Britain, which was the result of an international 

 understanding, that was in effect a treaty, although not technically 

 a treaty negotiated by the President, ratified by the Senate, signed by 

 the parties, and the ratifications formally exchanged by them. That 

 must be so, for British colonial policy, after the treaty of peace in 

 1783, which secured the independence of the thirteen American States, 

 notoriously excluded all foreign vessels from trading with British 

 colonies on this continent. The treaty of 1794 was careful to declare 

 that it should not, as to commercial privileges, " extend to the admis- 

 sion of vessels of the United States into the sea-ports, harbours, bays, 

 or creeks of His Majesty's said territories " on the continent of 

 America. The events which preceded the war of 1812 and that war, 

 confirmed and enforced the exclusion. After the Treaty of Ghent 

 we endeavored, by retaliatory laws, to counteract and change that 

 policy. The fishery treaty of 1818 was concluded in October of that 

 year, and, in April of the same year, Congress enacted a law which 

 was described in the official documents of the day as enforcing a 

 policy of non-intercourse by British vessels between ourselves and 

 ports closed by British laws against our vessels. On May 15, 1820, 

 Congress invigorated that law of 1818 by a new enactment, against 

 every vessel, owned in whole or in part by British subjects, if coming 

 or arriving ~by sea from any place in Lower Canada, or New Bruns- 

 wick, or Nova Scotia, or the Islands of Newfoundland, St. John's, 

 or Cape Breton, or from any British possession on this Continent. 

 We forbade, under pain of forfeiture, the entry, or attempted entry, 

 of any such vessel into our ports. We interdicted the importation 



