98 CASE OF THE "UNITED STATES. 



To force the owner to bring his action or claim within three 

 months — one of which is expended in thus giving notice, and the other 

 two may well expire, owing to the infrequency and uncertainty of 

 communications, before the distant owner can transfer funds and 

 give the requisite bonds to precede his suit, or lay claim to his ille- 

 gally seized property, which property will thus be condemned by 

 default: 



To force the owner, if he cannot prove the illegality of the seizure, 

 to pay treble costs : 



To screen the officer seizing, by providing that, if the judge shall 

 say there was probable cause, he shall be liable to no prosecution; 

 the plaintiff only entitled to 2d. damages; the defendant only liable 

 to costs. 



The whole of this act, and the proceedings on the subject, as 

 detailed in the journals of the assembly, display an unfriendly dis- 

 position towards Americans, or rather a determination to quarrel 

 or drive them from the exercise of rights secured by solemn treaty. 



The injustice and anno3^ance suffered by the fishermen have so 

 irritated them, that there is ground to believe that violence will be 

 resorted to, unless some understanding be had before the next 

 season.'* 



PERIOD FROM 1841 TO 1854. 



Controversy arising from Nova Scotia's proposed interpretation of the 

 renunciatory clause of the treaty. 



As has been shown in reviewing the treatment of American fisher- 

 men by the Province of Nova Scotia up to this time, their treaty 

 right of entering the bays and harbors on the Nova Scotia coast for 

 shelter, repairs, wood, and water had been unwarrantably interfered 

 with, and in effect destroyed by the indiscriminate seizure of their 

 vessels by the provincial authorities for trivial offences alleged to 

 have been committed within three miles of the shore in violation of 

 the so-called " rules, regulations and restrictions respecting the 

 fisheries on the coasts, bays, creelvs or harbors of the Province of 

 Nova Scotia" estabhshed under the Act of 1836. Not content, how- 

 ever, with their efforts to prevent the American fishermen from exer- 

 cising the treaty right referred to, the pro^nncial authorities pro- 

 ceeded to devise a new and far reaching interpretation of the renun- 

 ciatory clause of the treaty in order if possible to deprive the American 



"Appendix, pp. 451-453. 



