ARGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1165 



That report is dated the 14th August, 1839, and is the report of 

 the Acting Secretary of State to the President of the United States, 

 and he makes his official statement to that effect. In that report he 

 reviews the only controversies which had arisen between Great Brit- 

 ain and the United States, 'and in that part of his report which ap- 

 pears on p. 440 Mr. Vail states : 



" From these statements it will appear that the only cases of seiz- 

 ure of which anything is known at the Department, not being made 

 on the coasts of Newfoundland or Labrador, occurred at places in 

 which, under the convention of 1818, the United States had forever 

 renounced the right of their vessels to take, dry and cure fish ; retain- 

 ing only the privilege of entering them for the purposes of shelter, 

 repairs, purchasing wood and obtaining water, and no other. In the 

 absence of information of a character sufficiently precise to ascertain 

 either, on the one side, the real motives which carried the American 

 vessels into British harbors, or, on the other, the reasons which in- 

 duced their seizure by British authorities, the department is unable 

 to state whether, in the cases under consideration, there has been any 

 flagrant infraction of the existing treaty stipulations. The presump- 

 tion is, that if, on the part of citizens of the United States, there has 

 been a want of caution or care in the strict observance of those stipu- 

 lations, there has been, on the other hand, an equal disregard of their 

 spirit, and of the friendly relations which they were intended to pro- 

 mote and perpetuate, in the haste and indiscriminate rigor with which 

 the British authorities have acted." 



So that Mr. Vail, making his official report, shows that the con- 

 troversy prior to that time had been as to the right within these har- 

 bours, concerning which I have said that there was a dispute, that 

 is, as to whether or not a vessel was in actual distress or in distress 



in accordance with the judgment of the master of the vessel. 

 703 This report conclusively establishes that, as between the two 

 Governments, there had been no discussion of the construc- 

 tion of this article 1 of the treaty; United States vessels had been 

 enjoying the privileges under the treaty, and there had been no con- 

 flict between the two Governments except as to the right to go into 

 harbours under the terms of the proviso clause. 



The inhabitants of Nova Scotia apparently began, because of the 

 natural conditions arising out of the competition, a systematic 

 effort more or less justified, perhaps, in natural competition and by 

 the ambitious desires of every community to develop its own indus- 

 tries to nullify the treaty obligations between the United States and 

 Great Britain. 



In 1836 Nova Scotia memorialised King William IV to assent to 

 an Act containing rules and regulations and restrictions under which 

 the fisheries should be conducted. This memorial is found printed 

 in the Appendix to the Case of the United States on pp. 1040 and 

 1042. 



