ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 211 



enclosure marked No. i, a letter from Mr. Vernon Lushington, 

 from the British Admiralty, saying: 



"I am commanded by my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to 

 transmit, for the information of the Earl of Clarendon, a copy of a letter from 

 Vice Admiral Wellesley, dated April 27th, No. 151, stating that the Plover, 

 Royalist and Britomart" — 



the names of British vessels — 



''are about to be despatched to the Bay of Fundy, and the Coasts of Nova 



Scotia and Prince Edward's Island for the protection of the Canadian Fisheries. 



"Enclosed is a copy of the special instructions furnished to these ships." 



Enclosure No. 2 is a letter from Vice-Admiral Wellesley to the 

 Admiralty telHng when these vessels are to leave for the coast of 

 Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and enclosing a copy of 

 the instructions which will be given to the ships by the Admiral. 



Enclosure No. 3 consists of the instructions of the Vice-Admiral 

 to the commanding officers of these ships that were on the way to 

 Nova Scotia. And over on p. 500 the Tribunal will see that, as 

 an annex to this third enclosure of Mr. Thornton's letter to Mr. 

 Fish, is to be found this four-year-old Cardwell letter. The sub- 

 ject then under discussion was the old question of bays. That 

 was the only subject under discussion. The subject to which Mr. 

 Thornton's letter referred was that. The enclosures in his letter 

 to Mr. Fish related to that. The question up was: What were 

 British naval vessels going to do? What might they rightfully 

 do in arresting, preventing, seizing American vessels in the great 

 bays of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island — the non -treaty 

 coast? Mr. Thornton did not send this Cardwell letter to Mr. 

 Fish as a subject to which he called his attention. It was an annex 

 to one of the enclosures in the letter relating to the bay subject, 

 and in this annex to one of the series of papers relating to the bay 

 question there was this letter; and in this letter a single sentence 

 which referred to an entirely different subject, a subject which was 

 not under discussion at all. 



Mr. Fish on the 8th June acknowledged Mr. Thornton's letter 

 and properly and naturally expressed some views regarding the 

 subject-matter to which the letter related regarding the controversy 

 about which the letter was written, regarding the practical question 



