QUESTION FIVE. 



"Perhaps I shall be thought to charge the commissioners of 1818 

 with overlooking our interests. They did so, in the important re- 

 nunciation which I have quoted ; but they are obnoxious to no com- 

 plaints for so doing. In 1818, we took no mackerel on the coasts of 

 the British possessions, and there was no reason to anticipate that 

 we should ever have occasion to do so. Mackerel were then found 

 as abundantly on the coast of New England as anywhere in the 

 world, and it was not till years after this that this beautiful fish, in a 

 great degree, left our waters. The mackerel fishery on the provincial 

 coasts has principally grown up since 1838, and no vessel was ever 

 licensed for that business in the United States till 1828. The com- 

 missioners in 1818 had no other business but to protect the cod fish- 

 ery, and this they did in a manner generally satisfactory to those most 

 interested." 



In the blank indicated by the asterisks in the above occurred the 

 following passage : 



" The British have never taken a vessel as a trespasser when not 

 within the limits which we acknowledge we have renounced. They 

 have given particular directions to the officers of their vessels not to 

 do so, and the reason is plain. They know that if they exact a strict 

 observance of our renunciation, on our own construction, they break 

 up our mackerel fishery. Hence it would be folly in them to raise 

 an issue on the ' headland ' doctrine on which most people, I think, 

 would hold our construction to be the true one." 



It is obvious that this passage has no relevance to the purpose for 

 which the quotation was made in the British Case and in this Argu- 

 ment, but His Majesty's Government desires to express its regret 

 that, by a mistake, the asterisks indicating the absence of this pas- 

 sage were omitted in the citation made in the British Case. The 

 quotation, as made in the British Case appears not to have been 

 checked, as two other obvious blunders occur. (British Case, p. 97.) 

 During the debate in the Senate, it was contended by Senator Soule 



that bays less in width than six miles were " private bays " ; 

 126 that all others were part of the ocean; and that therefore, in 



the case of the smaller bays, the headlands would, for the pur- 

 pose of measuring the three miles, be connected by an imaginary line. 

 The Senator said (British Case, App., p. 178) : 



" ' Such bay,' says an eminent writer, ' must communicate with the 

 ocean only by a strait so narrow that it must be reputed as being a 

 part of the maritime domain of the State to which the coast belongs ; 

 so that you cannot enter it without going through the territorial sea 

 of that State; which means twice the distance of a gun-shot, or six 

 miles. It is required besides that all the coasts bordering on such bay 

 be subject to the State claiming such strait. The two conditions must 

 unite to give to any part of the ocean the character of an internal sea, 

 or a mare clausum." 1 



******* 



" The Convention of 1818, therefore, excludes us from no part of 

 the littoral seas washing Her Majesty's Dominions, without three 



