QUESTION FIVE. 153 



vented the fishermen of the United States from enjoying the fisheries 

 except on the treaty coasts. 



The very unreasonable suggestion had yet to be advanced that the 

 bays or harbors, which American fishermen were privileged to enter 

 for the purpose of shelter and of repairing damages therein, of pur- 

 chasing wood and of obtaining water, including such great bodies 

 of water as the Bay of Fundy, Fortune Bay and Placentia Bay. 



THE STATEMENTS OF RICHARD RTTSH IN 1833 AND IN 1853. 



Richard Bush remained for seven years after the conclusion of the 

 treaty of 1818 as minister for the United States in England. Dur- 

 ing this period he was " engaged in extensive negotiations with 

 England in 1823-24, which brought under consideration the whole 

 relations, commercial and territorial between the two countries, in- 

 cluding our entire intercourse by sea and land with her North 

 American Colonies." a 



In 1833 he published at Philadelphia "Memoranda of a Resi- 

 dence at the Court of London." In this account of his life in Eng- 

 land, published before Nova Scotia conceived the headland inter- 

 pretation of the renunciatory clause, Mr. Rush, who had an oppor- 

 tunity to know, during a period of seven years, the interpretation 

 put upon the clause by Great Britain, again recorded, before any 

 discussion as to the true interpretation, his understanding exactly 

 as reported to his Government in 1818. 6 



In a letter written in July, 1853, to Mr. Marcy, then Secretary of 

 State, Mr. Rush stated with reference to the treaty : 



In signing it we believed that we retained the right of fishing 

 in the sea, whether called a bay, gulf, or by whatever other term des- 

 ignated, that washed any part of the coasts of British North Ameri- 

 can provinces with the simple exception that we did not come within 

 a marine league of the shore. 



After quoting the renunciatory clause, he continued : 



These are the decisive words in our favor. They meant no more 

 than that our fishermen, whilst fishing in the waters of the Bay of 

 Fundy, should not go nearer than three miles to any of those small 

 inner bays, creeks, or harbors which are known to indent the coast 

 of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. To suppose they were bound 



U. S. Case, Appendix, 555. 

 > U. S. Case, Appendix, 323. 



