818 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 



will and fair dealing can suggest is that the terms should be recon- 

 sidered and a new arrangement entered into ; but this the Government 

 of the United States does not appear to have considered desirable. 



It is not, however, the case that the convention of 1818 affected only 

 the inshore fisheries of the British Provinces ; it was framed with the 

 object of affording a complete and exclusive definition of the rights 

 and liberties which the fishermen of the United States were thence- 

 forward to enjoy in following their vocation, so far as those rights 

 could be affected by facilities for access to the shores or waters of the 

 British Provinces, or for intercourse with their people. It is there- 

 fore no undue expansion of the scope of that convention to interpret 

 strictly those of its provisions by which such access is denied, except 

 to vessels requiring it for the purposes specifically described. 



Such an undue expansion would, upon the other hand, certainly 

 take place if, under cover of its provisions, or of any agreements relat- 

 ing to general commercial intercourse which may have since been 

 made, permission were accorded to United States fishermen to resort 

 habitually to the harbors of the Dominion, not for the sake of seeking 

 safety for their vessels or of avoiding risk to human life, but in order 

 to use those harbors as a general base of operations from which to 

 prosecute and organize with greater advantage to themselves the in- 

 dustry in which they are engaged. 



It was in order to guard against such an abuse of the provisions of 

 the treaty that amongst them was included the stipulation that not 

 only should the inshore fisheries be reserved to British fishermen, but 

 that the United States should renounce the right of their fishermen to 

 enter the bays or harbors excepting for the four specified purposes, 

 which do not include the purchase of bait or other appliances, whether 

 intended for the deep-sea fisheries or not. 



The undersigned, therefore, cannot concur in Mr. Bayard's conten- 

 tion that " to prevent the purchase of bait, or any other supply needed 

 for deep-sea fishing, would be to expand the convention to objects 

 wholly beyond the purview, scope, and intent of the treaty, and to 

 give to it an effect never contemplated." 



Mr. Bayard suggests that the possession by a fishing vessel of a per- 

 mit to " touch and trade " should give her a right to enter Canadian 

 ports for other than the purposes named in the treaty, or, in other 

 words, should give her perfect immunity from its provisions. This 

 would amount to a practical repeal of the treaty, because it would 

 enable a United States collector of customs, by issuing a license, origi- 

 nally only intended for purposes of domestic customs regulation, to 

 give exemption from the treaty to every United States fishing vessel. 

 The observation that similar vessels under the British flag have the 

 right to enter the ports of the United States for the purchase of sup- 

 plies loses its force when it is remembered that the convention of 1818 

 contained no restriction on British vessels, and no renunciation of any 

 privileges in regard to them. 



Mr. Bayard states that in the proceedings prior to the treaty of 1818 

 the British commissioners proposed that United States fishing ves- 

 sels should be excluded " from carrying also merchandise," but that 

 this proposition " being resisted by. the American negotiators, was 

 abandoned," and goes on to say, " this fact would seem clearly to indi- 

 cate that the business of fishing did not then, and does not now, dis- 

 qualify vessels from also trading in the regular ports of entry. A 



