924 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 



years past resorted without molestation, and that the duty of thus 

 excluding them has been thrown upon a newly constituted force of 

 fishery police, necessarily without experience of the difficult and 

 delicate duties which it is called upon to perform, there would be no 

 cause for surprise if occasional cases of hardship or of overzealous 

 action upon the part of the local authorities engaged in protecting 

 the interests of the Dominion were to be brought to light. It is the 

 earnest desire of my government to guard against the occurrence of 

 any such cases, to deal in a spirit of generosity and forbearance with 

 United States fishermen resorting to Canadian waters in the exercise 

 of their lawful rights, and to take effectual measures for preventing 

 arbitrary or uncalled-for interference on the parts of its officials with 

 the privileges allowed to foreign fishermen under the terms of the 

 convention of 1818. 



The difficulty of acting in such a spirit must, however, be greatly 

 increased by the course which has been pursued in this and in numer- 

 ous other cases already brought to your notice in founding not only 

 the most urgent remonstrances, but the most violent and offensive 

 charges and the most unjust imputation of motives upon complaints 

 such as that put forward by the captain of the Mollie Adams, a per- 

 son so illiterate that he appears not to have been qualified to make 

 out the ordinary entry papers on his arrival in a Canadian port, but 

 whose statements, many of which bear upon the face of them evi- 

 dence of their untrustworthiness, appear to have been accepted in 

 globo without question by the Secretary of State. 



You will, I cannot help thinking, concur in the opinion expressed 

 in the minister's report that such hasty and indiscriminate accusa- 

 tions can only have the effect of prejudicing and embittering public 

 feeling in both countries, and of retarding the prospect of a reason- 

 able settlement of the differences which have unfortunately arisen be- 

 tween them upon these subjects. 



I have, etc., LANSDOWNE. 



[Sub-inclosure.] 



Report of a committee of the honorable the privy council for Canada, 

 approved ~by his excellency the governor-general in council on the 

 31st March, 1887. 



The committee of the privy council have had under consideration a 

 dispatch dated 6th October, 1886, from the right honorable the secre- 

 tary of state for the colonies, transmitting a copy of a letter from the 

 foreign office inclosing copy of a dispatch from Her Majesty's min- 

 ister at Washington with a note from the Secretary of State of the 

 United States, calling attention to the alleged refusal of the collector 

 of customs at Port Mulgrave, Nova Scotia, to allow the master of the 

 United States fishing vessel Mollie Adams to purchase barrels to hold 

 a supply of water for the return voyage, and also a further dispatch 

 dated 16th December, 1886, referring to the same schooner, the Mollie 

 Adams, and her alleged treatment at Malpeque, Prince Edward 

 Island, and Port Medway, Nova Scotia, and requesting an early re- 

 port on the circumstances of this case. 



The minister of marine and fisheries to whom the said dispatches 

 and inclosures were referred submits the following report thereon: 



Mr. Bayard's note of the 10th September calls attention to the 



