295 



called his attention to it. " From the information in the possession of the 

 department,''' he observed : 



" It appears that the provincial authorities assume a right to exclude 

 Am(M-ican vessels from all their bays, even including those of Fundy 

 and Chaicurs, and to prohibit their approach withiu three miles of a 

 line drawn from headland to headland. These authorities also claim 

 a right to exclude our vessels from resorting to their ports unless in 

 actual distress, and American vessels are accordingly warned to depart, 

 OT ordered to get under weigh and leave a harbor, whenever the pro- 

 vincial custom-house or British naval officer supposes, without a lull 

 examination of the circumstances under which they entered, that they 

 have bccsi there a reasonable time." 



As yet, however, the colonists had not ventured to enforce the pre- 

 tension they had set up. Lord Falkland, iu a despatcli to Lord Stanley 

 dated in May, 1841, affirms this; i'ur he says: 



^■'in point of fact I have not been able to le^u-n that any seizures have 

 been made when the vessels have not been within three miles of the 

 distance prescribed b}^ the statute, or considered so to be, although it is 

 true that the Bay of Fundy, as well as soialler bays on the coast of this 

 province, is thought by the law officers in the province to form a part 

 of the exclusive jurisdiction of the crown." 



Besides, ho^v happens it that if the "King's most excellent Majesty, 

 by. and with the advice and cottsent of the Lords spiritual and tempual 

 and Commons" in Parliament assembled, meant to exclude — and by 

 the act of ISl'O actually did exclude, as far as the action of one govern- 

 ment could do so — our vessels from the bays now in dispute ; how hap- 

 pens it, I ask, that in 1841, twenty-one years afterwards, the queries ol 

 Lord Falkland before us were submitted to the crown hiwyers? On 

 the ground that I'arliament had alrcadij construed the convention as his 

 Lordsliip desired that it should be interpreted, why did not the British 

 minister to whom these queries were transmitted so state in reply ? The 

 act of 1819 was the supreme law of the realm; and if the commanders 

 of the ships of the royal navy on the American station had been in- 

 siructed year after year, and for twenty-one years, to execute it, and to 

 consider it as a construction of the convention in the sense now con- 

 tended for, why were every one of these commanders so very unfaith- 

 ful to their duty"? Why wa.s the fact that their orders from the admi- 

 ralty required them to hunt up and to drive out all American lishcrmen 

 from these bays unknown to evcnybot^y, in England and America? 



Three years previously (183S) Lord Cih^uelg, the Secretary for the 

 Colonies, in a communication to Sir Colin Campbell, lieutenant governor 

 of Nova Scotia, in answer to a joint address to the* Queen from the Le- 

 gislative Council and House <d"Asseinl)lyot that colony, complaining of 

 the h;d)itnal violation by American cifi/cns of the convention of lbl8, 

 promises that an armed force shall l>e kept, annually, on the fishing 

 grounds; and states that "her Majesty's minister at Washington had 

 been instructed to invite the friendly co-operation of the American gov- 

 ernment" to enforce a more strict obscrviuice of that convention. Here 

 was a very j>roper opportunity (o refer to the provisions of the act of 

 Parliament of 1S19, ;iiid to give our government Lord Glenc^lg's con- 

 struction of it. But instead of thLs, he tempers the expectations of tlie 



