PERIOD FROM 1871 TO 1905. 943 



on March 24, and also to express my views of his lordship's alterna- 

 tive proposition. 



Your visit and invitation to negotiate here was entirely welcome, 

 and of this I endeavored to impress you. 



Conversation with the President has confirmed these views, and 

 now it remains to give them practical effect. 



Great Britain being the only treaty-making party to deal with the 

 United States, the envoys of that Government alone are authorized 

 to speak in her behalf and create her obligations. 



I presume you will be personally constituted a plenipotentiary of 

 Great Britain to arrange here, with whomsoever may be selected to 

 represent the United States, terms of arrangement for a modus vi- 

 vendi to meet present emergencies and also a permanent plan to avoid 

 all future disputes. 



It appears to me that as matters now stand the colony of New- 

 foundland ought to be represented and included, for a single arrange- 

 ment should suffice to regulate all the joint and several interests 

 involved. I should, therefore, be informed speedily through the 

 proper channel as to the authorization and appointment by the Impe- 

 rial Government of such representatives. 



The gravity of the present condition of affairs between our two 

 countries demands entire frankness. 



I feel we stand at " the parting of the ways." In one direction I 

 can see a well-assured, steady, healthful relationship, devoid of petty 

 jealousies, and filled with the fruits of a prosperity arising out of a 

 friendship cemented by mutual interests and enduring because based 

 upon justice; on the other, a career of embittered rivalries, staining 

 our long frontier with the hues of hostility, in which victory means 

 the destruction of an adjacent prosperity without gain to the preva- 

 lent party a mutual physical and moral deterioration which ought 

 to be abhorrent to patriots on both sides, and which I am sure no two 

 men will exert themselves more to prevent than the parties to this 

 unofficial correspondence. 



As an intelligent observer of the current of popular sentiment in the 

 United States, you can not have failed to note that the disputed inter- 

 pretation of the treaty of 1818, and the action of the Canadian officials 

 towards American fishing vessels during the past season, has awak- 

 ened a great deal of feeling. 



It behooves those who are charged with the safe conduct of the 

 honor and interests of the respective countries by every means in 

 their power sedulously to remove all causes of difference. 



The roundabout manner in which the correspondence on the fish- 

 eries has been necessarily (perhaps) conducted has brought us into 

 the new fishing season, and the period of possible friction is at hand, 

 and this admonishes us that prompt action is needed. 



I am prepared, therefore, to meet the authorized agents of Great 

 Britain at this capital at the earliest possible day, and enter upon 

 negotiations for a settlement of all differences. 



The magnitude of the interests involved, and the far-reaching and 

 disastrous consequences of any irritating and unfriendly action, will, 

 I trust, present themselves to those in whose jurisdiction the fisheries 



