116 CASE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



While he desires, however, without reserve, to express his sense of 

 the amicable disposition evinced by her Majesty's government on 

 this occasion in relaxing in favor of the United States the exercise 

 of what, after deliberate reconsideration, fortified by high legal au- 

 thorit}^. is deemed an unquestioned right of her Majesty's govern- 

 ment, the undersigned woukl be unfaithful to his duty did he omit 

 to remark to Lord Aberdeen that no arguments have at any time 

 been ackhiced to shake the confidence of the government of the United' 

 States in their own construction of the treaty. "While they have ever 

 been prepared to admit, that in the letter of one expression of that 

 instrument there is some reason for claiming a right to exclude 

 United States fishermen from the Bay of Fundy, (it being difficult 

 to deny to that arm of the sea the name of ''bay" which long geo- 

 graphical usage has assigned to it,) they have ever strenuously main- 

 tained that it is only on their own construction of the entire article 

 that its known design in reference to the regulation of the fisheries 

 achnits of being carried into effect. 



The undersigned does not make this ol)servation for the sake of 

 detracting from the liberahty evinced by her Majesty's government 

 in relaxing from what they regard as their right; but it would be 

 ]>lacing his CAvn government in a false position to accept as mere 

 favor that for which they Iiave so long and strenuoush^ contended as 

 due to tliem under the convention. 



It becomes the more necessary to make this observation, in conse- 

 quence of some doubts as to the extent of the proposed relaxation.® 



Mr. Everett then points out the similarity between the Washington 

 and the Arg\is cases, and after referring to the paragraph above 

 quoted from Lord Aberdeen's note on the Argus case to the effect 

 that the views set forth in his note on the Washington case are appli- 

 cable to tlie questions presented b}'- the Argus case, Mr. Everett goes 

 on to sa}*: 



This expression taken by itself woulil seem to authorize the expec- 

 tation that the waters where these two vessels respectively were 

 captured would be held subject to the same principles, whether of 

 restriction or relaxation, as indeed all the considerations which occur 

 to the undersigned as having probably led her Majesty's government 

 to the relaxation in reference to the Bay of Fundy, exist in full and 

 even superior in reference to the waters on the northeastern coast of 

 Cape Breton, where the "Argus" w^as seized. But if her Majesty's 

 provincial authorities are permitted to regard as a "bay" any por- 

 tion of tlie sea which can be cut off by a direct line connecting two 

 points of the coast, liowever destitute in other respects of the charac- 

 ter usually implied by that name, not only wall the waters on the 

 north-eastern coast of Cape Breton, but on many other parts of the 

 shores of the Anglo-American dependencies where such exclusion 

 has not yet heen thought of, be prohibited to American fishermen. 

 In fact, the waters which vrash the entire south-eastern coast of Nova 

 Scotia, from Cape Sable to Cape Canso, a distance on a straight line 



o Appendix, p. 498. 



