MISCELLANEOUS. 1283 



the Legislative Council and House of Assembly of that colony, com- 

 plaining of the habitual violation by American citizens of the con- 

 vention of 1818, promises that an armed force shall be kept, annually 

 on the fishing grounds; and states that "her Majesty's minister at 

 Washington had been instructed to invite the friendly co-operation 

 of the American government" to enforce a more strict observance 

 of that convention. Here was a very proper opportunity to refer 

 to the provisions of the act of Parliament of 1819, and to give our 

 government Lord Glenelg's construction of it. But instead of this, 

 he tempers the expectations of the colonists by saying, that "The 

 commanders of these vessels will be cautioned to take care that, while 

 supporting the rights of British subjects, they do not themselves 

 overstep the bounds of the treaty." 



Lord Aberdeen, April, 1844, in a letter to Mr. Everett, adopts the 

 opinion of the crown lawyers. This, I suppose, was the first unquali- 

 fied official avowal to a functionary of our government of the head- 

 land construction of the convention. His lordship, in March, 1845, 

 in another communication addressed to Mr. Everett, reaffirms this 

 construction, and distinctly states that with reference to the Bay of 

 Fundy and the other bays on the British American coasts, " no United 

 States fisherman has, under that convention, the right to fish within 

 three miles of the entrance of such bays as designated by a line drawn 

 from headland to headland at that entrance." 



Our right, therefore, to the bays in dispute rests upon the British 

 interp rotation of the treaty, as well as our own. 



Nor are we unsupported by colonists. Some, with great fairness, 

 admit all that we claim. Two examples will suffice. A respectable 

 colonial newspaper, in commenting, in 1845, upon Lord Stanley's 

 despatch of March 30, of that year, which, it will be remembered, 

 opens the Bay of Fundy, objects to the measure on the ground that 

 our privileges we're already ample: for, it remarks, "in the conven- 

 tion of 1818, it is stipulated tnat the citizens of the United States 

 shall be allowed to fish within three nautical miles around all our 

 coasts;" that instrument, it argues, "should have reserved to us 

 [to British subjects] the quiet and undisturbed possession of our bays 

 and inlets." The article from which this extract is made is able, and 

 was copied into several other colonial newspapers.* 



* Some of the colonial newspapers still maintain similar views. The St. John New 

 Brunswicker said, in August, 1852, in commenting on Mr. Webster's despatch or proc- 

 lamation," that " it will be seen that Mr. Webster labors under the impression that her 

 Majesty's government are about to enforce the convention strictly, according to the 

 opinions of the law officers of England. We believe that such is not the case. For 

 some years past there has been a tacit understanding that American fishing vessels should 

 only be excluded from those bays or inlets of our coasts which were less than six miles wide, 

 and within which American vessels could not fish unless within three miles of the land, 

 either on the one side or the other. There is not the slightest necessity for straining 

 the terms of the convention, for it is notorious that American fishing vessels pursue 

 everywhere near the shores of these provinces, within three miles of the land, where 

 only in the autumn they get the best fishing; and it is to prevent this flagrant and 

 acknowledged breach of the convention that the present movements are taking place." 



The St. John News, in the same month, disavowed the new construction of the con- 

 vention in these words: 



" Now all this tempest in a tea-pot amounts to just nothing at all, and we think the 

 American press will find out before a very great while that they have been wasting their 

 powder, and getting nothing in return but pity for their ignorance. They will lonrn 

 that the legislatures of these provinces have not attempted to give a new reading to the 



