PEKIOD FROM 1871 TO 1905. 863 



provided by the convention of 1818, as well as to prevent any abuse of 

 the privileges reserved and guarantied by that instrument forever to 

 the citizens of the United States engaged in fishing, and responding 

 to the suggestion made to you by the Earl of Iddesleigh, in the month 

 of September last, that a modus vivendi should be agreed upon be- 

 tween the two countries to prevent encroachment by American fisher- 

 men upon the Canadian inshore fisheries, and equally to secure them 

 from all molestation when exercising only their just and ancient 

 rights, I now inclose the draft of a memorandum which you may pro- 

 pose to Lord Iddesleigh, and which, I trust, will be found to contain 

 a satisfactory basis for the solution of existing difficulties, and assist 

 in securing an assured, just, honorable, and, therefore, mutually sat- 

 isfactory settlement of the long- vexed question of the North Atlantic 

 fisheries. 



I am encouraged in the expectation that the propositions embodied 

 in the memorandum referred to will be acceptable to Her Majesty's 

 Government, because, in the month of April, 1866, Mr. Seward, then 

 Secretary of State, sent forward to Mr. Adams, at that time United 

 States minister in London, the draft of a protocol which in substance 

 coincides with the first article of the proposal now sent to you, as you 

 will see by reference to Vol. 1 of the U. S. Diplomatic Correspon- 

 dence for 1866, p. 98 et seq. 



I find that, in a published instruction to Sir F. Bruce, then Her 

 Majesty's minister in the United States, under date of May 11, 1866, 

 the Earl of Clarendon, at that time Her Majesty's secretary of state 

 for foreign affairs, approved them, but declined to accept the final 

 proposition of Mr. Seward's protocol, which is not contained in the 

 memorandum now forwarded. 



Your attention is drawn to the great value of these three proposi- 

 tions, as containing a well-defined and practical interpretation of 

 Article 1 of the convention of 1818, the enforcement of which co- 

 operatively by the two Governments, it may reasonably be hoped, will 

 efficiently remove those causes of irritation of which variant construc- 

 tions hitherto have been so unhappily fruitful. 



In proposing the adoption of a width of ten miles at the mouth as a 

 proper definition of the bays in which, except on certain specified 

 coasts, the fishermen of the United States are not to take fish, I have 

 followed the example furnished by France and Great Britain in their 

 convention signed at Paris, on the 2d of August, 1839. This defini- 

 tion was referred to and approved by Mr. Bates, the umpire of the 

 commission under the treaty of 1853, in the case of the United States 

 fishing schooner Washington, and has since been notably approved 

 and adopted in the convention signed at The Hague, in 1882, and 

 subsequently ratified, in relation to fishing in the North Sea, between 

 Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, and the Neth- 

 erlands. 



The present memorandum also contains provisions for the usual 

 commercial facilities allowed everywhere for the promotion of legiti- 

 mate trade, and nowhere more fully than in British ports and under 

 the commercial policies of that nation. Such facilities can not with 

 any show of reason be denied to American fishing- vessels when plying 

 their vocations in deep-sea fishing grounds in the localities open to 

 them equally with other nationalities. The convention of 1818 inhib- 

 its the "taking, drying, or curing fish" by American fishermen in 



