DESPATCHES, KEPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 743 



and again state the situation of affairs existing in 1818, and to which 

 the treaty of that year applies. 



Before and at that time and down to 1830 no American vessel of 

 any kind was as of right admitted to any British North American 

 port, and no rights of commerce or trade existed (with the few excep- 

 tions before stated) ; and, reciprocally, no British North American 

 vessel of any kind, fishing or other, was admitted to ports of the 

 United States otherwise than as an act of mutuality in the cases stated. 

 The treaties of 1794 and 1815 purposely left all these ports and all 

 trade between British North America and the United States to be 

 regulated according to the particular policy of each nation. Such 

 is still the condition of things so far as any treaty obligation is con- 

 cerned, excepting article 29 of the treaty of 1871. 



In 1818, then, no American fishing vessel or any other American 

 vessel could enter a port on any of the coasts of British North 

 America, even where the full right of fishing in-shore existed. And 

 the treaty of 1818, formed on that basis, was not intended to, and it 

 did not in any way, touch the question of any trade or commercial 

 right whatever, and of course made no distinction in these respects 

 between fishing and other American vessels. It looked and spoke 

 only in regard to the fact of the renunciation by the United States 

 of their fishing rights in that part of the territorial waters of British 

 North America named in the treaty, and, as an incident of that re- 

 nunciation and as an incident only, it provided that American fish- 

 ing vessels might enter those renounced waters, not to fish, but only 

 for " the purpose of shelter and of repairing damages therein, of 

 purchasing wood, and obtaining water ; " and this right was 

 445 to be exercised under such restrictions as should be necessary 

 to prevent their fishing, etc., therein, or in any other manner 

 abusing the privileges so reserved to them. 



These words, " in any manner abusing the privilege of entry," 

 clearly referred to the then existing state of British law which pre- 

 vented all trade intercourse by foreign vessels with the provinces, 

 and were intended to authorize such action on the part of Great 

 Britain as should be justly necessary to prevent violations of British 

 navigation and commercial laws. 



But in the course of years, when after these mutual arrangements 

 of a legislative character were made, the business and trade between 

 the United States and British North America developed, the British 

 North Americans, like their fellows in England, began to see that 

 the American system of customs laws operated to the advantage of 

 American citizens and industries and unfavourably to Canadian and 

 British interests. They then commenced, and have since steadily 

 continued (except during the intervals of so-called reciprocity, under 

 the treaties of 1854 and 1871), a systematic and persistent course or 

 hostile legislation and administration under the pretext of enforcing 

 the restrictions of the treaty of 1818, well calculated and designed, as 

 the committee thinks is clear, to so embarrass and harass the citizens 

 of the United States, engaged in the legal pursuit of fishing on the 

 high seas as well as in the British North American waters reserved to 

 them by the treaties of 1783 and 1818, as to drive them out of the 

 business, and so to leave it all in British hands, or else to induce the 

 United States, by such a course of unfriendly and even outrageous 



