DESPATCHES, EEPOETS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 303 



the evidence that has been introduced renders this question not of the 

 slightest importance, and inasmuch as it is a question which you are 

 not empowered, except incidentally, to decide, a question eminently 

 proper to be passed upon between the governments directly, I pre- 

 sume you will rejoice with me in finding that it is not practically 

 before us, and that we need not trouble ourselves concerning it. If 

 it had appeared in this case that there was fishing carried on to any 

 appreciable extent within the large bays, more than six miles wide 

 at the headlands, and at a distance of more than three miles from the 

 contour of the shores of those bays, the United States would have 

 contended 'that their citizens, in common with all the rest of man- 

 kind, were entitled to fish in such great bodies of water as long as 

 they kept themselves more than three miles from the shore. In 

 short, they would have contended, as it has been contended, in the 

 brief filed in this case, that where the bays are more than six miles in 

 width from headland to headland, they are to be treated in this 

 respect, for fishing purposes, as parts of the open sea; but the evi- 

 dence, as I said befSre, has eliminated all that matter from the 

 inquiry. The only bodies of water as to which any such question can 

 arise are, in the first place, the Bay of Fundy. Now, the right of 

 American fishermen to enter and fish in that bay was decided by 

 arbitration in the case of the schooner Washington, and Her 

 Majesty's Government have uniformly acquiesced in that decision. 

 So, as to that body of water, the rights of the citizens of the United 

 States must be regarded as res adjudicata. In addition, however, it 

 turns out that within the body of the Bay of Fundy there has not 

 been any fishing more than three miles from the shore for a period 

 of many years. One of the British witnesses said that it was forty 

 years since the mackerel fishery ceased in the Bay of Fundy. At all 

 events, there is no evidence in this case of fishing of any description 

 in the body of the Bay of Fundy more than three miles from the 

 shore, and this fact, in addition to the decision in the Washington 

 case, disposes of that. 



The next body of water is the Bay of Miramichi; as to which it 

 will turn out by an inspection of the map on which the Commis- 

 sioners, appointed under the Reciprocity Treaty, marked out the 

 lines reserved from free fishing, on the ground that they were mouths 

 of rivers, that the mouth of the river Miramichi comes almost down 

 to the headlands of the bay. You will remember that the report of 

 the Commission on the Reciprocity Treaty is referred to in the 

 Treaty of Washington, and that the same places excluded by their 

 decision remain excluded now. What is left? The narrow space 

 below the point marked out as the mouth of the river Miramichi, and 

 . within the headlands of the bay, is so small that there can be no 

 ; fishing there of any consequence, and no evidence of any fishing there 

 <at all has been introduced. So far as the Bay of Miramichi goes, 

 therefore, I cannot see that the headland question need trouble you 

 at all. 



Then comes the Bay of Chaleurs, and in the Bay of Chaleurs what- 

 ever fishing has been found to exist seems to have been within three 

 miles of the shores of the bay, in the body of the Bay of Chaleurs. 

 I am not aware of any evidence of fishing, and it is very curious 

 that this Bay of Chaleurs, about which there has been so much 

 controversy heretofore, can be so summarily dismissed from the 



