798 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



maintain the position which was laid down in the note of the undersigned, 

 dated the 15th of April last, that with regard to the other bays on the British 

 American coasts no United States fisherman has, under that convention, the 

 right to fish within 3 miles of the entrance of such bays as designated by a line 

 drawn from headland to headland at that entrance. 



That treaty was then 27 years old. It is now 70. But Mr. Edward 

 Everett, instead of recommending war as the means of meeting this 

 flat denial of our rights, that are now considered so clear as to be 

 indisputable, replied to Lord Aberdeen, in the same spirit that sub- 

 sequently pervaded Mr. Webster's circular (above quoted), as follows : 



Speaking of the attitude of the United States as to the British 

 construction of the treaty of 1818, he says: 



While they have ever been prepared to admit, that in the letter of one 

 expression of that instrument there is some reason for claiming a right to 

 exclude United States fishermen from the Bay of Fundy (it being difficult to 

 deny to that arm of the sea the name of " bay," which long geographical usage 

 has assigned to it), they have ever strenuously maintained that it is only on 

 their own construction of the entire article that its known design in reference 

 to the regulation of the fisheries admits of being carried into effect. 



Will Mr. Everett also be censured for finding difficulties in the 

 headland theory of the British Government (so clearly stated by Lord 

 Aberdeen) that staggered Mr. Webster's honest mind in 1852? 



A still more conspicuous and deliberate presentation of the diffi- 

 culty of arriving at a satisfactory construction of the first arti- 

 480 cle of the treaty of 1818, and of the propriety and necessity of 

 . an agreement with Great Britain, as to its true meaning, is 

 found in the letter of Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State, to Mr. Welsh, 

 our minister to England, of September 27, 1878. Mr. Evarts says: 



If the benevolent method of arbitration between nations is to commend itself 

 as a discreet and practical disposition of international disputes, it must be by 

 a due maintenance of the safety and integrity of the transaction, in the essential 

 point of the award, observing the limits of the submission. 



But this Government is not at liberty to treat the fisheries award as of this 

 limited interest and operation in the relations of the two countries to the im- 

 portant, permanent, and difficult contention on the subject of the fisheries, 

 which for sixty years has, at intervals, pressed itself upon the attention of the 

 two Governments and disquieted their people. The temporary arrangement of 

 the fisheries by the treaty of Washington is terminable, at the pleasure of 

 either party, in less than seven years from now. 



And he then proceeds to argue that if this Government acquiesced 

 in the measure of damages assessed by the Commission, our rights 

 might be prejudiced after the twelve years' period expired. Refer- 

 ring, further on in the dispatch, to the historical aspect of the matter, 

 Mr. Evarts said : 



Our diplomatic intercourse has unfolded the views of successive British and 

 American cabinets upon the conflicting claims of mere right on the one side 

 and the other, and at the same time evinced on both sides an amicable prefer- 

 ence for practical and peaceful enjoyment of the fisheries, compatibly with a 

 common interest, rather than a sacrifice of such common interest to a purpose 

 of insisting upon extreme right at a loss on both sides of what was to each 

 the advantage sought by the contention. 



In this disposition the two countries have inclined more and more to retire 

 from irreconcilable disputations as to the true intent covered by the somewhat 

 careless and certainly incomplete, text of the convention of 1818, and to look at 

 the true elements of profits and prosperity in the fisheries themselves, which 

 alone, to the one side or the other, made the shares of their respective partici- 

 pation therein worthy of dispute. This sensible and friendly view of the matter 

 in dispute was greatly assisted by the experience of the provincial populations 



