622 MISCELLANEOUS 



He said the correctness of the Judge's decision was very doubtful; 

 that Great Britain had gone as far in this affair to accommodate us 

 as she could go, and he thought would do nothing further, &c. 

 * * * * * * * 



(May, 1818.) 



15th. When I came to the office I found Mr. Bagot already there. 

 He came to make the proposal already broached by Lord Castle- 

 reagh to Mr. Rush; stating that with regard to the slaves carried 

 away from the United States by British officers after the late peace, 

 the British Government accepted the proposal made by that of the 

 United States, to refer the question of construction of the treaty 

 which has arisen upon it to the arbitration of a friendly sovereign. 

 ******* 



As to the fisheries, he said, he regretted very much not having 

 received from us the proposal that had been promised him, as now 

 the Legislature of Nova Scotia had taken up the subject. They were 

 addressing the Crown, and although their influence might not be very 

 great, yet it must always be something. 



I said I hoped they would not listen to the Nova Scotia Legislature, 

 who suffered their temper to run away with their interest. They 

 had found themselves compelled to repeal their plaster laws, and 

 now took up the fisheries by way of avenging themselves. If they 

 were suffered to have their way, they would make perpetual war 

 between Great Britain and the United States. 



He said that was very true, but that we did not seem to think the 

 complaints of the great inconveniences suffered by the British, in 

 consequence of our fishermen frequenting their coast, were well 

 founded. 



I said we knew very well there was the inconvenience of competi- 

 tion. Their fishermen would be better satisfied if they had the whole 

 coast to themselves. This was an old inconvenience, which had 

 always existed when the fishery was common to the French and 

 English. The competition also sometimes gave rise to quarrels 

 between the fishermen of the different nations. That was an incon- 

 venience, but it did not affect the question of right. 



He said he alluded to the opportunities afforded for smuggling. 

 I said there might have been something in that at one particular 

 period of time before the late war, when large American ships went 

 there and took cargoes for Europe a state of things which probably 

 would never happen again. Our fishing vessels now, and in all ordi- 

 nary times, were small, without cargoes, frequenting chiefly a desert 

 coast, where there could be no smuggling. I thought there was very 

 little cause for such complaint now. The oase of one of our vessels 

 seized last summer at St. Andrew's, about which I had written to 

 him, showed there was much more suspicion than real smuggling on 

 that coast. As to the proposal which was to have been made to the 

 British Government, and which had hitherto been delayed, its post- 

 ponement had been owing to difficulties which had been discovered 

 since it was promised. It was founded on the principle of assuming 

 a range of coast within given latitudes for our fishermen to frequent, 

 and abandoning the right to fish for the rest. But the fish themselves 

 resorted at different times to different parts of the coast, and a place 



