1282 MISCELLANEOUS. 



the authorities of Nova Scotia, said Lieutenant Paine, "seem to claim 

 a right to exclude Americans from all bays, including those large 

 seas such as the Bay of Fundy and the Bay of Chaleurs; and also 

 to draw a line from headland to headland, the Americans not to 

 approach within three miles of this line." 



Here, then, two years before the crown lawyers gave the opinion 

 under examination, is our first knowledge of the "headlands." It 

 was but whispered even in 1839. The naval officers knew nothing 

 about it. Our government knew nothing about it until 1841, when 

 Mr. Forsyth, in a despatch to Mr. Stevenson, our envoy to the Court 

 of St. James, called his attention to it. "From the information in 

 the possession of the department," he observed: 



"It appears that the provincial authorities assume a right to ex- 

 clude American vessels from all their bays, even including those of 

 Fundy and Chaleurs, and to prohibit their approach within three 

 miles of a line drawn from headland to headland. These authorities 

 also claim a right to exclude our vessels from resorting to their ports 

 unless in actual distress, and American vessels are accordingly warned 

 to depart, or ordered to get under weigh and leave a harbor, whenever 

 the provincial custom-house or British naval officer supposes, with- 

 out a full examination of the circumstances under which they entered, 

 that they have been there a reasonable time." 



As yet, however, the colonists had not ventured to enforce the pre- 

 tension they had set up. Lord Falkland, in a despatch to Lord Stan- 

 ley dated in May, 1841, affirms this; for he says: 



"In point of fact I have not been able to learn that any seizures 

 have been made when the vessels have not been within three miles of 

 the distance prescribed by the statute, or considered so to be, although 

 it is true that the Bay of Fundy, as well as smaller bays on the coast 

 of this province, is thought by the law officers in the province to form 

 a part of the exclusive jurisdiction of the crown." 



Besides, how happens it that if the "King's most excellent Majesty, 

 by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and tem- 

 poral and Commons" in Parliament assembled, meant to exclude 

 and by the act of 1819 actually did exclude, as far as the action of 

 one government could do so our vessels from the bays now in dis- 

 pute; how happens it, I ask, that in 1841, twenty-one years after- 

 wards, the queries of Lord Falkland before us were submitted to the 

 crown lawyers? On the ground that Parliament had already con- 

 strued the convention as his Lordship desired that it should be inter- 

 preted, why did not the British minister to whom these queries were 

 transmitted so state in reply? The act of 1819 was the supreme law 

 of the realm; and if the commanders of the ships of the royal navy on 

 the American station had been instructed year after year, ana for 

 twenty-one years, to execute it, and to consider it as a construction 

 of the convention in the sense now contended for, why were every 

 one of these commanders so very unfaithful to their duty? Why was 

 the fact that their orders from the admiralty required them to hunt 

 up and to drive out all American fishermen from these bays unknown 

 to everybody, in England and America? 



Three years previously (1838) Lord Glenelg, the Secretary for the 

 Colonies, in a communication to Sir Colin Campbell, lieutenant gov- 

 ernor of Nova Scotia, in answer to a joint address to the Queen from 



