AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1593 



much use to our fixhermen, had been found very inconvenient to the Brit- 

 ish ; and in return, we have acquired an enlarged liberty, both of fishing 

 and drying fish, within other parts of the British jurisdiction forever." 



Fishing for mackerel in ten fathoms of water off' the bight of Prince 

 Edward Island was not the thing then taken into consideration. There 

 was no mackerel fishery till many years after. This controversy was 

 caused by a claim on the one hand and a resistance on the other with 

 reference to the ocean fisheries, to the cod fishery, the whale fishery, the 

 deep-sea fishery, three leagues, fifteen leagues, sixty miles from the 

 shore; and after the Conveuton of 1818 had been formed, if it had been 

 construed as the British Government construe it to day, there would have 

 been no more controversy on the subject. The controversy that arose 

 after the Convention of 1818 sprang from the unwarrantable and extrav- 

 agant pretensions, not so much of Her Majesty's home government, as 

 of the colonial authorities. In order to understand the importance that 

 has been attributed to this subject, it is indispensably necessary that 

 you should know what was claimed to be the interpretation of the Con- 

 vention of 1818 down to a very recent day. The provincial authorities 

 claimed, in the first place, to exclude United States vessels from navi- 

 gating the Gut of Canso. Nobody makes that claim now. In the second 

 place, they claimed the right to exclude them from fishing anywhere in 

 the Bay of Fundy. That claim was insisted upon until, on arbitration, 

 it was decided against Her Majesty's Government. Not only was the 

 headland doctrine asserted as to the great bays, but, under its guise, the 

 provincial authorities claimed the right to draw a straight line from 

 East Point to North Cape of Prince Edward Island, and make the exclu- 

 sion three miles from that point. I have had marked on the map 

 annexed to the British Case two or three of the principal lines of exclu- 

 sion as they were then insisted upon, that you may know what it was 

 that our people regarded as important. The claim to treat East Point 

 and North Cape as headlands, and to exclude us a distance of three 

 miles from a line drawn between them, is a notion that has not departed 

 from the popular mind to the present day. 



The affidavits from Prince Edward Island were drawn upon the theory 

 that that is the rule, and in two or three of them I have found it 

 expressly stated, " that all the mackerel were caught within the three- 

 mile line; that is to say, within a line three miles from a straight line 

 drawn from East Point to North Cape." Now, those affidavits are all 

 in answer to one set of questions, they are all upon one model, and it 

 is quite obvious that they were all of them colored by that view of the 

 three-mile limit, as two of them expressly say that they were. At all 

 events, that was the claim that was made down to a very recent period. 

 The claim also was made to exclude United States fishermen from North- 

 umberland Strait. In the case of the Argus, seized by British cruisers, 

 the ground of seizure was, that a line was to be drawn from Cape North 

 to the northern line of Cow Bay in Cape Breton. It is marked there 

 in red on the map. The evidence of that claim, which was the basis of 

 the seizure of the Argus, is to be found in the correspondence between 

 Mr. Everett and Lord Aberdeen on the subject. See Mr. Everett's letter 

 to Lord Aberdeen, quoted from in the United States brief, on page 21. 

 They likewise claimed to draw a line from Margaree to Cape St. George. 

 You will find that down there. Those claims were not merely made on 

 the quarter deck, but they were made, some of them, in diplomatic cor- 

 respondence, some of them in resolutions of the Nova Scotia legislature. 

 They were made, and they were insisted upon, and understanding this, 

 I think you will be prepared to understand why it was that exclusion 



