DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 751 



be had in respect of the same matters; but the committee does not 

 think that the proposed treaty can be justified in this way. 



This idea of concession was doubtless the ground and guide upon 

 which the treaty of 1818 was founded. At the time of that treaty the 

 United States claimed (and justly as the committee thinks) that the 

 fishing rights recognised by the treaty of 1783 on all the shores of 

 British North America were property rights and that they were not 

 lost by the war of 1812, and that after the treaty of peace of 1814, 

 which made no mention of the subject, those rights existed with all 

 their original force. 



The British Government insisted upon the contrary and that the 

 right of citizens of the United States to fish in any British North 

 American waters had been entirely lost. This led to a partition of 

 the disputed territory whether wise or unwise is immaterial to the 

 present question but in making this settlement the contracting 

 parties had evidently in view the then understood law of nations, that 

 territorial waters only extended to three miles from the shore; and 

 they also had in view the then existing state of treaty and legal rela- 

 tions between Great Britain and the United States in respect of inter- 

 course between the British North American provinces and this coun- 

 try, and the treaty provided in clear terms where, in British waters, 

 United States fishermen might fish and where they might not. 



The only possible question that could fairly arise under the treaty 

 of 1818 was the question what was a British bay. But the question, 

 as a practical one, has been in all the sixty-nine years since the mak- 

 ing of that treaty of little or no account ; for, so far as is known, the 

 only seizure of an American vessel by the British authorities for fish- 

 ing more than 3 miles from the shore in a bay more than 6 miles wide 

 was the seizure of the Washington, in 1848, and in that case, as has 

 been before stated, the international umpire decided the seizure to 

 have been an illegal and unjust one. 



What American fishermen standing in all other respects on the 

 footing of other Americans engaged in business on the sea, might do 

 in their character as -fishermen in the territorial waters and har- 

 bours of British North America was clearly stated, and in language 

 that would seem to have been incapable of sincere misunderstanding. 



The whole of the substance of the present state of the difficulty 

 and discord has arisen from the course of the British and Canadian 

 legislation and administration, directed against the vessels and fisher- 

 men of the United States in respect of their coming into British 

 North American ports or harbours or within three miles of their, 

 shores, either under treaty rights or commercial rights. 



In view of the plain history of these transactions and of the mat- 

 ters hereinbefore stated, it does not seem to the committee that the 

 existing matters of difficulty are subjects for treaty negotiation ; and 

 such appears to have been the opinion of the Senate by its action and 

 by the remarks of many of its members of both political parties and 

 by the action of the House of Representatives upon and in the pas- 

 sage of the Act of March 3, 1887, and its approval by the President. 



No new event or situation of affairs has arisen since that time, and 

 the only real questions subsisting between the two countries in respect 

 of the subject were those of reclamations by the United States for 

 outrages upon its citizens, for which this treaty makes no provision. 



