DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 709 



are reasonable and proper checks in the hands of the local authorities 

 to identify the recipients and prevent abuse, and can form no im- 

 pediment to those who intend to use them fairly. 



The hospitality secured for our vessels in all cases of actual dis- 

 tress, with liberty to unload and sell and transship their cargoes, is 

 full and liberal. 



These provisions will secure the substantial enjoyment of the 

 treaty rights for our fishermen under the treaty of 1818, for which 

 contention has been steadily made in the correspondence of the De- 

 partment of State, and our minister at London, and by the American 

 negotiators of the present treaty. 



The right of our fishermen under the treaty of 1818 did not extend 

 to the procurement of distinctive fishery supplies in Canadian ports 

 and harbors; and one item supposed to be essential, to wit, bait, was 

 plainly denied them by the explicit and definite words of the treaty 

 of 1818, emphasized by the course of the negotiation and express 

 decisions which preceded the conclusion of that treaty. 



The treaty now submitted contains no provision affecting tariff 

 duties, and, independently of the position assumed upon the part of 

 the United States, that no alteration in our tariff or other domestic 

 legislation could be made as the price or consideration of ob- 

 425 taining the rights of our citizens secured by treaty, it was con- 

 sidered more expedient to allow any change in the revenue 

 laws of the United States to be made by the ordinary exercise of 

 legislative will, and in promotion of the public interests. Therefore, 

 the addition to the free list of fish, fish-oil, whale and seal oil, etc., 

 recited in the last article of the treaty, is wholly left to the action 

 of Congress; and in connection therewith the Canadian and New- 

 foundland right to regulate sales of bait and other fishing supplies 

 within their own jurisdiction is recognized, and the right of our 

 fishermen to freely purchase these things is made contingent, by the 

 treaty, upon the action of Congress in the modification of our tariff 

 laws. 



Our social and commercial intercourse with those populations who 

 have been placed upon our borders and made forever our neighbors 

 is made apparent by a list of United States common carriers, marine 

 and inland, connecting their lines with Canada, which was returned 

 by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Senate on the 7th day of 

 February, 1888, in answer to a resolution of that body; and this is 

 instructive as to the great volume of mutually profitable interchanges 

 which has come into existence during the last half century. 



This intercourse is still but partially developed, and if the amicable 

 enterprise and wholesale rivalry between the two populations be not 

 obstructed, the promise of the future is full of the fruits of an un- 

 bounded prosperity on both sides of the border. 



The treaty now submitted to you has been framed in a spirit of 

 liberal equity and reciprocal benefits, in the conviction that mutual 

 advantage and convenience are the only permanent foundation of 

 peace and friendship between States, and that with the adoption of 

 the agreement now placed before the Senate, a beneficial and satis- 

 factory intercourse between the two countries will be established so 

 as to secure perpetual peace and harmony. 



In connection with the treaty herewith submitted I deem it also 

 my duty to transmit to the Senate a written offer or arrangement, 

 in the nature of a modus vivendi, tendered after the conclusion of 



