524 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



manner as if she were not engaged in the fisheries " was 

 scarcely sound. 



On the trial of the David J. Adams, charged with purchas- 

 ing bait and ice in contravention of the terms of the treaty 

 of 1818, the admiralty court in Halifax found some diffi- 

 culty, because the Imperial Act of 1819, enforcing the 

 provisions of the treaty of 1818, prescribed no penalty for 

 such purchases, the only penalties mentioned being for 

 "fishing and preparing to take fish" within the prohibited 

 waters. To hold that buying bait was necessarily for the 

 purpose of " preparing to fish " within prohibited waters was 

 scarcely logical. 



The real grievance of American fishermen, however, was 

 in the aggravating and needlessly severe port regulations 

 of the Dominion, and also in the harsh manner of their exe- 

 cution. One of these statutes was so framed that the 

 captor was entitled to one-half the profits of confiscation, 

 and the burden of proof to show innocence practically fell 

 upon the defendant captains. The practice of purchasing 

 bait and landing to transship cargoes, and the doing of 

 numerous other acts necessarily connected with the refitting 

 of a ship, such as purchasing new water casks, material for 

 mending nets or sails, were declared illegal. For these 

 reasons, and often upon very slight pretexts, American 

 vessels were detained to the great discomfiture and annoy- 

 ance of the fishermen. It was rather, then, to the strained 

 and unfriendly spirit manifested in the interpretation of their 

 laws than to the laws themselves that the Americans directed 

 their complaints. 



The Canadians, on the other hand, charged that the Ameri- 

 cans sought, contrary to law, to use their ports as a base for 

 fishing operations, and thus to exercise and enjoy in common, 

 privileges which they well knew had not been conceded to 

 them. Having exhausted their own fisheries by overexploita- 

 tion, replied the Canadians, the Americans had demanded all 

 the privileges of British subjects in Canadian waters, and 

 furthermore they actually assumed and used them in defiance 

 of treaty prohibitions, and in perfect contempt of all local 



