No. 192.
Mr. Bayard to Sir L.
West.
Washington, June 14, 1886.
Sir: The consul-general of the United States at Halifax communicated to me the information derived by him from the collector of customs at that port to the effect that American fishing vessels will not be permitted to land fish at that port of entry for transportation in bond across the province.
I have also to inform you that the masters of the four American fishing vessels of Gloucester, Mass., Martha A. Bradley, Battler, Eliza Boynton, and Pioneer, have severally reported to the consul-general at Halifax that the subcollector of customs at Canso had warned them to keep outside an imaginary line drawn from a point three miles outside Canso Head to a point three miles outside St. Esprit, on the Cape Breton coast, a distance of 40 miles. This line for nearly its entire continuance is distant 12 to 25 miles from the coast.
The same masters also report that they were warned against going inside an imaginary line drawn from a point three miles outside North Cape, on Prince Edward Island, to a point three miles outside of East Point, on the same island, a distance of over 100 miles, and that this last-named line was for nearly that entire distance about 30 miles from the shore.
The same authority informed the masters of the vessels referred to that they would not be permitted to enter Bay Chaleur.
Such warnings are, as you must be well aware, wholly unwarranted pretensions of extraterritorial authority and usurpations of jurisdiction by the provincial officials.
It becomes my duty, in bringing this information to your notice, to request that if any such orders for interference with the unquestionable rights of the American fishermen to pursue their business without molestation at any point not within three marine miles of the shores, and within the defined limits as to which renunciation of the liberty to fish was expressed in the treaty of 1818, may have been issued, the same may at once be revoked as violative of the rights of citizens of the United States under convention with Great Britain.
I will ask you to bring this subject to the immediate attention of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, to the end that proper remedial orders may be forthwith issued.
It seems most unfortunate and regretable that questions which have been long since settled between the United States and Great Britain should now be sought to be revived.
I have, &c.,