136 ARGUMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



"It is further well understood that the liberty of taking, drying, 

 and curing fish, granted in the preceding part of this article, shall 

 not be construed to extend to any privilege of carrying on trade with 

 any of His Britannic Majesty's subjects residing within the limits 

 hereinbefore assigned for the use of the fishermen of the United 

 States, for any of the purposes aforesaid. 



"And in order the more effectually to guard against smuggling, it 

 shall not be lawful for the vessels of the United States, engaged in 

 the said fishery, to have on board any goods, wares, or merchandise 

 whatever, except such as may be necessary for the prosecution of the 

 fishery, or the support of the fishermen whilst engaged therein or 

 in the prosecution of their voyages to and from the said fishing 

 grounds. And any vessel of the United States which shall contra- 

 vene this regulation may be seized, condemned, and confiscated, 

 together with her cargo." 



In their reply, the United States commissioners offered no objec- 

 tion whatever to the British proposal relative to the " carrying on 

 trade." It was at the same fifth conference that the British com- 

 missioners made proposals for very limited commercial intercourse 

 between the countries proposals which at the next conference the 

 United States commissioners rejected. 



In the report to their Government by the British commissioners 

 there is the following (British Case, App., p. 87) : 



" With respect to the colonial trade it appears to us only necessary 

 to communicate to your Lordship, that while they admitted the im- 

 portance of the trade to the United States (attended as they 

 156 stated themselves to believe, with corresponding advantages 

 to Great Britain) they stated their willingness rather to forgo 

 entering into any arrangement on this subject, than depart from the 

 principle upon which the projet of their present article was framed, 

 namely that however limited that trade might be, it should within 

 those limits be equally open to America and to Great Britain They 

 further stated that they could not consent to put the intercourse 

 between Bermuda Turk's Island Nova Scotia and New Brunswick 

 and the United States upon a different footing from that upon which 

 the West India trade (properly so called) should ultimately stand. 

 In reply to an observation made by us, that so far as regarded the 

 trade between Bermuda, Turks Island and Nova Scotia and the 

 United States, the effect of the article as explained by them, would 

 be to place Great Britain on a worse footing than she stood at pres- 

 ent ; they frankly stated that, that was certainly their intention, and 

 that there could be no doubt, that the restrictive system applied by 

 the recent law of the United States to the trade between the United 

 States and the British West Indies, would be applied in a future 

 session, to that carried on with Bermuda Turk's Island & Halifax, 

 it being as they stated, the policy of the American Government to 

 counteract by these means the system adopted by Great Britain of 

 defeating, through the medium of those ports of entrepot, the general 

 prohibitions of the United States against the West India intercourse." 



