288 MISCELLANEOUS 



ernment to the infractions of the treaty which they were permitting 

 and the Legislative Council were called upon to report upon the 

 case to state why these infractions of the treaty were permitted. It 

 is referred to Council and the following is the report : 



Your honor entertains doubts as to the legality of the practice 

 under the provisions of the Treaty of 1818. 



In reply, the Council asks permission to state : 



I. That the existence of the practice referred to by your honor was 

 mentioned in the Council's Minute of June 1, in the present year, 

 addressed to your honor in reply to a despatch of Earl Granville's, 

 wherein his lordship desires to be informed whether certain state- 

 ments concerning the fisheries in Prince Edward Island are correct; 

 as a copy of that minute was forwarded to the colonial office, and its 

 receipt has been acknowledged, but no comment made on its contents 

 or any intimation given to this Government that a change of system, 

 with regard to foreign fishing vessels, was contemplated, the Council 

 had assumed that the explanations offered by them were satisfactory, 

 and that no change affecting this Island would be carried into effect 

 at present. 



II. Lest it should be supposed that the people of this Island alone, 

 of all the Maritime Provinces of British North America, have de- 

 liberately, and with the connivance of their local Government, carried 

 on an illegal but lucrative business, the Council remind your honor, 

 for the information of the Secretary of State, and the practice re- 

 ferred to in your honor's minute, has, until a recent period, been per- 

 mitted in the Straits of Canso, that the New Brunswick railway has 

 transported large quantities of fish of foreign take and that Her 

 Majesty's representatives could not fail to be cognizant of the prac- 

 tice of transhipping cargoes and supplying foreign fishing vessels; 

 moreover, no attempt at concealment thereof was made in the sum- 

 mer of 1869, during the visits of two Vice- Admirals and several Com- 

 manders of Her Majesty's ships to Charlottetown Harbor; conse- 

 quently it is not surprising that merchants and traders in this colony 

 should regard the practice referred to without suspicion of its ille- 

 gality. 



******* 



V. Having thus acquitted themselves of their duty, and caused the 

 law to be carried into effect, though at a sacrifice to their fellow- 

 colonists, which will be little understood or appreciated elsewhere, 

 the Council feel bound to protest against the policy now re-adopted. 

 That policy may have been well suited to the circumstances of the 

 colonies fifty-two years ago, but the Council ventures to think, is in- 

 applicable at the present day, when free trade principles, which a 

 British nation had declared to be the principles of common sense, 

 form the basis of the British commercial code. Fairly stated, the old 

 policy revived, demands from the people of Prince Edward Island 

 the exclusion from their harbors of their best customers customers 

 who have employed the colonial marine in importing salt for their 

 use; the colonial mechanics in manufacturing their barrels: cus- 

 tomers who have purchased their clothing, their provisions and their 

 sea stores in the island markets. These men are to be expelled until 

 the forty million citizens of the United States succumb to the pres- 

 sure put upon them by four million colonists, and consent to concede 

 reciprocity in exchange for free access to the fishing grounds and 



