1306 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



Commodore Perry's admission. The extract I desire to read is in 

 paragraphs 4, 5, and 6 of that letter from Admiral Seymour to 

 the Admiralty : 



" It is to be observed that the United States Government has 

 deemed force necessary to protect their rights, when no complaint of 

 the mode in which the Convention was enforced last year has, to my 

 knowledge, been made, and no seizure or circumstance had taken 

 place during the present season which justified the probability of a 

 collision, except one may be brought on by their own people, or in 

 consequence 01 an endeavour to resume the fisheries in the Bay of 

 Chaleur, from which they were excluded last year; and the resump- 

 tion would tend to the great disadvantage of the British fisheries 

 around that bay. 



" Commodore Perry, in 1852, although not officially authorized to 

 establish what were fishing-grounds open to his countrymen, did not 

 attempt to urge that Chaleur was of that description, and did not 

 himself enter the bay. 



" I am not authorized by my instructions to pursue a different 

 course from that of last year; and I consider the moment when the 

 United States are sending a force beyond any that can be necessary 

 for their proposed object, ill-suited for concessions. Mr. Crampton 

 did not dissent from this view of Mr. Marcy's proposal; and a mes- 

 sage was therefore sent by electric telegraph on the 9th to his Secre- 

 tary of Legation at Washington, that ' I could not give the assurance 

 requested ; that a single United States ship of war on our own coasts 

 could ascertain facts; and that more would be menace, and likely to 

 produce mischief.' " 



Now, Sirs, Commodore Perry's instructions are not before the 

 Tribunal. I assume that they are not here for the same reason that 

 ours are not here. They evidently authorised him to make the ad- 

 missions which he has made. Those admissions have been before our 

 friends for some time, and we have had no contradiction of them. 



In further support of the statement that I am now trying to prove, 

 I ask to call attention to a sentence in a letter from Lord Malmes- 

 bury, to be found in the British Case Appendix, p. 172. In the 

 fourth paragraph from the top of this letter to the British Minister 

 at Washington will be found this language: 



"Compelled therefore for the reason already stated to reject the 

 proposition abovementioned but earnestly desirous by all means in 

 their power to avert the chances of collision between American citi- 

 zens and British subjects, Her Majesty's Government will at once 

 adopt the precaution of repeating the instructions, on which during 

 a long series of years British Admirals commanding on the North 

 American station have invariably acted, and they will further in- 

 struct Sir George Seymour to use the utmost forbearance and mod- 

 eration in dealing with such American vessels as may be found mani- 

 festly infringing the terms of the Treaty." 



We are aware, Sirs, what the instructions were that were issued 

 in 1852. They were the same as had been issued for a long period 

 of years. 



