the efforts of the little island of Prince Edward, did not furnish more than one vessel. When to these was added a naval force of English steamers and sailing vessels, for the avowed purpose of preventing encroachments on our fisheries, a storm arose in Congress. The more fiery of the Senators, including the most responsible among them, the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, treated the collection of this naval force as an "insult and indignity to the whole American people." This fleet, they said, must have some ulterior object. War was freely spoken of as a possible result. But the American Executive took the matter more calmly, and instead of sending the whole home squadron into our waters sent only the frigate Mississippi. unreasonably, but not the less pertinaciously, held to be unfair; for it is one thing to enter on the free list raw products which serve as food, or enter into manufactures, and altogether another thing to admit along side of them completed manufactures. Many nations, when there is no question of treaty stipulations, make a difference between the two classes. They find it advantageous to obtain raw produce on the cheapest terms; whether in the shape of food or materials, to be worked up into manufactures. American politicians and manufacturers failed to recognize the necessity of discriminating in this way between different articles of import. The treaty having been legally terminated, the Cabinet of Washington, through Mr. Seward and Mr. Secretary McCulloch, declined to discuss proposals for any new arrangement from which manufactures should be excluded. And in any case, they refused to enter on negotiations for a new reciprocity treaty. They proposed reciprocal legislation as a substitute; and they insisted on This threatening aspect of affairs had been mainly brought about by the pertinacity with which Nova Scotia had insisted on the treaty being executed, in its full rigour. That the fishermen of this Province should accept the treaty of Washington, as a boon, shows how fully they appreciate the open-placing raw materials and manufactures on ing of the American market to the products of their industry. It is the more remarkable that this should occur among a people whose political passions have for four years been inflamed almost to the highest pitch consistent with the preservation of order. If we have given away, on new terms, those fisheries which, on a previous occasion, were accepted by American statesmen as an equivalent for a more general yet necessarily limited reciprocity of commerce, it does not follow that under the altered circumstances, we have not done the best we could. The treaty of 1854, never long popular with the Americans, was finally abrogated by Congress. The chief objections urged against it were its restricted scope and its alleged one-sided character. It admitted our raw produce to American markets and excluded their manufactures from ours. The latter were chargeable with duty; the first was free. This discrimination was, the same footing. These terms Canada rejected with an unanimity that was unbroken by any voice of dissent loud enough to be heard amid the general din. To have admitted American manufactures free would either have involved a loss of revenue, with which it was impossible to dispense, or a discrimination in favour of the United States and against all the rest of the world, England included. So far, the objection urged by Canada was reasonable. But it went beyond this, and embraced legislative reciprocity in any and every possible form. Under like circumstances, when all the resources of diplomacy had been exhausted, England once tried the expedient of reciprocal legislation with success. And, as in this case also, it was the United States that had to be dealt with. The questions to be settled were questions of commerce and navigation. There was, in the words of Canning, an evident conviction among the diplomatists, on both sides, "that there existed an unconquerable difference of princi. ple, and it was by that difference, rather than by an irreconcilableness of interest, that a satisfactory arrangement was rendered hopeless." Under these circumstances, England passed an Act of Parliament which contained proposals to be carried into effect on their being reciprocated by Congress, or the authority of other nations, as respected the nations so reciprocating. In this way, England, from 1823 to 1830, overcame a difficulty which had baffled negotiation and survived the exhausted efforts of diplomacy to remove. But whether Canada were right or wrong in refusing to try the experiment of reciprocal legislation, the fact remains that she did resolutely and persistently refuse. The statesmen of Washington were not less persistent in refusing to negotiate a new reciprocity treaty. In 1871, as in 1867, they refused to listen to propositions for galvanizing into new life the treaty of 1854, which they had strangled amidst loud exclamations of national delight. We might have insisted on holding the fisheries as a latent reserved power; but in that case, the only certain result would have been continued disputes about encroachments, while it would have rested with the authorities at Washington to give, or refuse to give, the only equivalent for which we could have consented to part with them. If they had, for four years, refused our terms, we could not point to any time in the future when they would accept them. As a means of repurchasing the conditions of the old Reciprocity Treaty, or anything like them, it would have been a blind self delusion to rely on the fisheries. We do not forget that, in 1851, the President declined to negotiate, and suggested a regulation of the commerce of the two countries by reciprocal legislation; and that this objection to the mode of proceeding was overcome three years later. But the circumstances were then different. No previous treaty had existed to become unpopular, and be terminated with the assent of all parties in the Republic. We have, then, to consider the Fishery clauses on their merits; and without prejudice in favour of an alternative arrangement, which the stern facts oblige us to look upon as impossible. The facility with which excuses could be found for objecting to the British interpretation of the Treaty might be made a dangerous source of mischief in the hands of politicians willing to subordinate all questions to their personal success. The claim made by Americans of a right to fish in the large bays, which Mr. Webster, when Secretary of State, admitted was not tenable on a strict construction of the Treaty, had long, and especially since 1842, been a fertile subject of dispute. It was reserved to General Butler to encourage American fisherman to encroach on the inshore fisheries, within the three mile limit, and to use force to repel attempts at capture. Before giving this advice he had been their District representative in Congress, and had latterly been living for some months among the fishermen on the coast of New England, whose good will he was now doubly anxious to secure in view of a prospective election, in which the gubernatorial chair of the State would be the object of contest. It is possible that he may have heard from those fishermen how some of their progenitors, in the last generation, resorted to acts of violence, akin to those he recommended; and that they escaped all punishment. Of the nine American vessels captured in 1824, by Captain Hoare, of Her Majesty's brig Dotterel, one was retaken by her crew, and two others were rescued by the joint efforts of their crews and an armed party from Eastport, Maine. When the British Government complained of these proceedings, its communication remained unanswered a year and a half; and when afterwards, waiving any demand for the punishment of the persons concerned in the outrages, it asked an acknowledgment of the wrong done, even that satisfaction does not appear to have been given. In the interval, between the exchange of ratifications and the action of the Dominion Parliament necessary to give full effect to the Treaty of Washington, the opportunity was availed of by the owners of the American fishing schooner, E. H. Horton, seized in September, for a violation of the fishery laws, and lying in Guysborough harbour, awaiting an investigation before the Court of Admiralty, to act upon the rash advice of Gen. Butler. On the night of the 8th October, in the absence of the guards, she was cut from her moorings and taken in triumph to Gloucester, Mass., where her arrival, after this outrage, was cause of much wild local excitement and rowdy rejoicing. But the act does not command much sympathy outside of the circle of interested fishermen and their immediate neighbours. General Butler, in making so rash an appeal to men proverbial for their ignorance, and liable by the accidents of the season to find their venture unrewarded, must have known that he was sowing seed on a soil that might possibly prove alarmingly fertile. If he encouraged them to take forcible possession of the shore fisheries, they would easily persuade themselves that any attempt to exclude them from Bay Chaleur was alike unreasonable and illegal. If the claim to fish in that Bay rested on an application of the principles of international law, we think it likely that it would have been tenable. But the question, which had previously given much trouble, depended for its solution on the interpretation of the Convention by which the Americans renounced the right of taking fish within three miles of any bay as well as of any creek or harbour. The English interpretation was that the three mile line must be drawn from the headlands; an interpretation which the Americans, unable to prove ncorrect, were never willing to accept. In 1845, the British Government, while adhering to this construction, conceded to them the privilege of fishing in the Bay of Fundy; but it was with the condition that they should not go within three miles of the entrance of any other bay on the coasts of Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. The United States, through its minister, Mr. Everett, accepted the concession, but denied that to be a favour which had been contended for as a right. It mattered not that the Americans had themselves applied the term bay to a water of their own, Delaware Bay, nearly as wide as Bay Chaleur, and treated it as the exclusive property of the nation. The British ship Grange, captured in Delaware Bay, by the French frigate Embuscade, in 1793, was demanded for restoration by the Washington Government, on the ground that the capture had taken place in the neutral waters of the United States. And France, at a time when she was in a sufficiently contentious mood, complied without a word of objection, by the pen of Citizen Minister Genet, the most contentious of mortals. contentious of mortals. But this question. of the right of fishing in the Bay of Chaleur always remained, like an open fester, which stubbornly refused to yield to treatment. And it is possible that we have not seen the last of it; for it would revive with the termination of the Treaty of Washington. A factitious importance, was formerly attached to the fisheries from the belief that they were the best nurseries for the naval marine of the countries by whose people they were prosecuted. This notion was not confined to any one country: it prevailed alike in France, in England, and the United States. Bounties on fish were formerly, and are sometimes now, defended on this ground. A nation largely engaged in fisheries and having but a limited commercial marine, might seek among fishermen the materials with which to man its navy; but it is difficult to believe that the fisheries now form the best, or even a good school of naval seamanship. Now that the navies of the world are formed largely of steamships, often armour plated, there is very little to be learned in a fishing smack that would be of use in the naval service. A fisherman will learn to keep his feet in a rough sea, and will not be liable to be prostrated by sea sickness like a landsman; but he learns not much else that would be of use in the navy. The merchant marine, though an imperfect, is a better school. How many British American fishermen are annually drafted into the English navy? Very few at all; directly, scarcely any. The habits of the fishermen are eminently sedentary. The great majority of them return, year after year, when the season's venture is over, to the same spot. England no longer encourages this supposed nursery for seamen by bounties: Canada, of all these British Provinces, did so, before Confederation, and her fishery never attained respectable dimensions. France may gain something to her navy by the Newfoundland fisheries, because they are largely followed by a home population, who once a year visit their native country. And though Daniel Webster may have been in the right when he flattered the American fishermen by giving them credit for success in naval encounters, it is very doubtful whether, with the modern way of conducting naval warfare, this will ever be true in future. As for Canada, she has not yet become burthened with the cost of maintaining a navy; and if some day, she should find it necessary to do so, and the fisheries were as good a resource as has been alleged, she would be found to possess abundant raw material for the purpose. President Grant's opening message to Congress, in 1870, gave rise to a suspicion that he had taken his tone, on the Fishery question, from General Butler, without going to the length of his supposed mentor; and showed a tendency to increase the number of difficult and irritating questions arising under the Convention of 1818. His bill of complaint had but slender ground of justification; much of it none at all. He set out by alleging that it had been customary for the British or Colonial authorities to warn American fishermen not to trench on what he called the technical rights of Great Britain; but that this practice had not been followed when the Parliament of the Dominion resolved to grant no more licenses to Americans to engage in our shore fisheries. This complaint of want of notice is not a new one. It was made by Minister Everett, in 1842, when British rights were enforced in the Bay of Fundy; and it was made by Senator Mason, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, in 1852, when an extra protective naval force of British vessels had been sent to the fishing grounds. As the Americans had, as far back as 1845, been allowed the liberty of fishing in the Bay of Fundy, this privilege, we may admit, should not have been withdrawn without notice, if at all. There is nothing in the Canadian Fishery Act of 1867 to exempt this Bay from its purview. But the President made no complaint on this score; and it is possible that the fact of the prior concession had escaped his notice, as it seems to have escaped the notice of the Canadian Parliament. The chief reason for abolishing the license system was that that it was not honestly carried out; that for one licensed vessel there were several poachers, and the difficulty of distinguishing between the two classes was very great. Another objection made by President Grant was that, though the treaty obligations of the United States were towards England, Canada exercised a delegated power to seize and condemn American vessels hovering within three miles of any creeks or harbours; that she, an irresponsible power, exercised her authority harshly and with a view to producing political effect on the Government of Washington. If the authority to seize American vessels hovering in forbidden waters, were exercised Minister in London, brought this along with other objections against the Nova Scotia Act of 1836, apparently in ignorance of the fact that this provision did not originate with the Legislature of that Province, but had first been embodied in an Imperial Statute passed the very next year after the treaty was concluded. No objection was then made that the prohibiting of foreign vessels from preparing to fish within limits which they could enter only for other purposes, was beyond the scope of the treaty; and for nearly a In tically acquiesced in by the Americans. by Canada, the President threatened in loose and general terms, that the authorities of the Republic would take steps to enforce what he called American rights. Whether in the shape of an Imperial or Colonial enactment, or both, the substance of the provision here denounced had existed ever since the first Act of Parliament was passed to give the treaty effect; and this is the first time that the American Government made it the ground of a like intimation. The President might fairly claim that, as the treaty was made between the United States and Eng-quarter of a century, this provision was pracland, each country is entitled to look to the other for a fulfilment of its obligations. But is Canada no part of the British Empire? In point of fact, whatever seizures were made were nearly all made by vessels belonging to the British navy. British subjects living in this part of the Empire might surely act in conjunction with those sent by the metropolitan power to see the treaty obligations enforced. The fishery laws of the Dominion cannot go into effect till they receive the assent of the Crown, in one form or another. A question might be raised whether an error was not committed in the Act of 1867. This Act is in part, a literal copy of an Act passed by the Legislature of Nova Scotia, in 1836. Both these Acts authorized certain officers to board foreign fishing vessels, found in any harbour of Canada or hovering within three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks or harbours; and to take certain prescribed proceedings afterwards. There can be no doubt about the right to capture vessels fishing within three miles of any of the places mentioned; for the enactment, so far only follows the wording of the treaty. But whether a vessel preparing to fish would properly be liable to seizure and condemnation under the treaty, as it was under these Statutes, is a question that might fairly have been raised. But we do not find that it ever was raised till the Convention had been in force twenty-three years. In 1841, Mr. Forsyth, American That functionary also complained of the provision requiring a vessel found within a harbour to depart, on being warned to do so, within twenty-four hours. These foreign fishing vessels had a right to go into harbours to buy wood and obtain water; but they might be subjected to such restrictions as would be necessary to guard against their abusing this privilege. Was the requirement that a suspected vessel should leave within twentyfour hours a necessary restriction? In 1842, the English law officers of the Crown gave an opinion on the legality of another form of restriction. To the question, whether American fishermen had the right to enter the bays and harbours of Nova Scotia for the purpose of purchasing wood and obtaining water, when they had provided neither of these necessaries, in their own country, at the commencement of the voyage; or whether they had a right to do so only when their original supply of these articles had been exhausted: the answer was that the liberty of entering for these purposes was conceded in general terms, unrestricted by any conditions express or |