250 



before detection, notwithstanding every guard which it is within the 

 means of the province to employ, will render very difficult the attempt 

 to prevent violations of the remaining restrictions, while, in the case of 

 seizures, the means of evasion and excuse, which experience has shown 

 to be, under any circumstances, abundantly ready, will be much en- 

 larged. 



"An instance has just occurred which illustrates this apprehension, 

 and confirms the observations to the same effect contained in the report 

 I had the honor to make to 3'-our excellency on the 17th September 

 last, on the same subject. 



"An American fisherman, on the 5th of this month, was seized in 

 the Bay of Fundy, at anchor ^inside of the light-house at the entrance 

 of Digby Gut,' about a quarter of a mile from the shore, his nets lying 

 on the deck, still wet, and with the scales of herrings attached to the 

 meshes, and havinsr fresh herrins's on board his vessel. The excuse 

 sworn to is, that rough weather had made a harbor necessary ; that the 

 nets were wet from being recently washed ; but that the fish were 

 caught while the vessel was beyond three miles from the shore. 



"Hence, too, will be extended and aggravated all the mischiefs to 

 our fisheries from the means used by the Americans in fishing, as by 

 jigging — drawing seines across the mouths of the rivers — and other 

 expedients ; from the practice of drawing the shoals from the shores, by 

 baiting; and, above all, from their still more pernicious habit of throw- 

 ing the garbage upon the fishing-grounds and along the shores. 



"Every facility afforded the American fisherman to hold frequent, 

 easy, and comparatively safe intercourse with the shores, extends an- 

 other evil, perhaps more serious in its results — the illicit traffic caiTied 

 on under the cover of fishing — in which not only the revenue is 

 defrauded, and the fair dealer discountenanced, but the coasts and re- 

 mote harbors are filled with noxious and useless articles, as the poison- 

 ous rum and gin and manufactured teas, of which already too much is 

 introduced into the country, in exchange for the money and fish of the 

 settlers; and from this intercourse, when habitual and established from 

 year to year, the moral and political sentiments of our population can- 

 not but sustain injury. 



" In the argument of the American minister his excellency appears 

 to assume that the question turns on the force of the word ' hay,'' and 

 the peculiar expression of the treaty in connexion with that word; but 

 although it was obviously the clear intention of its framers to keep the 

 American fishermen at a distance of three marine miles from the 

 ^bays, creelcs, and harbors,'' there does not, therefore, arise any just 

 reason to exclude the word coasts, used in the same connexion in the 

 treaty, from its legitimate force and meaning ; and if it be an admitted 

 rule of general law that the outline of a coast is to be defined, not by 

 its indentations, but by a line extending from its principal headlands, 

 then waters, although not known under the designation, nor having the 

 general form of a bay, may yet be within the exclusion designed by 

 the treaty. 



"His excellency the American minister complains of the ^essential 

 injustice'' of the law of this province under which the fisheries are at- 



