748 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



which was intended to completely reverse the whole British preten- 

 sion upon the subject, and put our fishing vessels, for all purposes 

 of provisions and supplies, upon the same footing that British fish- 

 ing vessels occupy in the United States and that American trading 

 vessels do in the British provinces it certainly should, and probably 

 would, have been stated in language incapable of sincere misunder- 

 standing. 



What the committee thinks it means is that an American fishing 

 vessel, having obtained a licence to purchase provisions on and for 

 the homeward voyage, which is all that the first clause says or 

 describes, viz, the mere act of obtaining the licence upon application, 

 such vessel, having obtained such licence, shall, upon all occasions to 

 which the licence, viz, upon all occasions of the homeward voyage, 

 be accorded facilities for doing what the licence says she may. This, 

 the committee thinks, is the literal and grammatical construction of 

 the paragraph, and all that can be extracted from it by the ordinary 

 principles of construction. 



The whole of this article, then, as it appears to the committee, is 

 one that would be totally derogatory to the honour and interests of 

 the United States to agree to. The committee can never recommend 

 or agree that any American vessel or citizen shall receive less free 

 and favourable treatment in any foreign port whatever than is 

 accorded to the vessels or subjects of such foreign country by the laws 

 and policy of the United States. 



The subject of commercial rights, viewed in another aspect, com- 

 pels the inquiry whether it is not entirely absurd to consider that if a 

 British port existed on the southwestern or western coast of New- 

 foundland, or on the coast of Labrador, in respect of which, by the 

 treaty of 1818, there is no exclusion of American vessels from terri- 

 torial waters, such American vessel could, so far as the treaty of 1818 

 is concerned, enter such port for all and the same purposes that any 

 other American vessel could, and that, under the same treaty, 50 

 miles to the eastward on the southern coast of Newfoundland, the 

 very same American vessel should not now have any right of entry 

 for the same purpose ? 



The twelfth article of the treaty under consideration provides 

 that- 

 Fishing vessels of Canada and Newfoundland shall have on the Atlantic coast 

 of the United States all the privileges reserved and secured by this treaty 

 to United States fishing vessels in the aforesaid waters of Canada and 

 Newfoundland. 



If this article was intended to put Canadian fishing vessels upon 

 the same footing only in American ports and waters that American 

 vessels are put in Canadian ports and waters, there would be mutual- 

 ity and equality, however narrow, in it. But this, evidently, was 

 not the purpose of the article, for it is evident to the committee that 

 Great Britain would not have consented to any such great diminution 

 of the rights of her fishing vessels as they now exist in the ports and 

 waters of the United States. The article itself, it will be seen, while 

 somewhat obscure, is still drawn in such a way as only to be affirma- 

 tive, and measures privileges, reserved and secured, and says noth- 

 ing of conditions and limitations and nothing of ports, etc. But. 

 however this may be, the committee does not think that it comports 

 with the dignity or hospitality of the United States to deny to Brit- 



