at Halifax, these distinguished jurists say, "that no right exists on the part of American citizens to enter the bays of Nova Scotia, there to take fish, although the fishing being within the bay may be at a greater distance than the three miles from the shore of the bay, as we are of opinion that the term headland is used in the treaty to express the part of the land we have before mentioned, excluding the interior of the bays and the inlets of the coast."

Now, neither the term "headland" nor anything equivalent or synonymous, occurs in the convention of 1818; and this legal authority, which, no doubt, was mainly instrumental in leading the home government to adopt the colonial construction of the treaty, rests, in this respect, upon an imaginary basis. The law officers of the Crown appear to have mistaken a sentence in the ex parte case made up at Halifax, in which the word "headland" appears, for a part of the treaty between the United States and Great Britain, which they were required to expound. The government of the United States cannot but regret that an official opinion which had the effect of reversing the construction of the convention on which Great Britain had acted from 1818 to 1842, which excluded our fishermen from some of the best fishing-grounds, after the undisturbed enjoyment of a quarter of a century, and finally brought the countries to the verge of a deplorable collision, should have been given by the law officers of the Crown without a more careful perusal of the text of the treaty.

I wish, before closing this despatch, to call your attention to a very important point connected with this general subject. In Lord Aberdeen's letter to me of the 10th of March, 1845, announcing the intention of the Queen's government to allow our fishermen to enter the Bay of Fundy, his lordship says:

"In thus communicating to Mr. Everett the liberal intentions of her Majesty's government, the undersigned desires to call Mr. Everett's attention to the fact that the produce of the labor of the British colonial fishermen is at the present moment excluded, by prohibitory duties on the part of the United States, from the markets of that country; and the undersigned would submit to Mr. Everett that the moment at which the British government are making a liberal concession to the United States trade, might well be deemed favorable for a counter-concession on the part of the United States to British trade, by the reduction of the duties which operate so prejudicially to the interests of the British colonial fishermen."

Having no instructions on this subject, I was able only to

reply to it in general terms, that the government of the United States, I was persuaded, would gladly make any reduction in these duties which would not seriously injure our own fishermen; but that the encouragement of this portion of the seafaring community had always been considered in the United States, as in Great Britain, as resting on peculiar grounds of expediency.

In the following year, however, and notwithstanding the colonial opposition had, in the mean time, led the home government to abandon the liberal intention of opening all the other outer bays to American fishermen, the prohibitory specific duties of which Lord Aberdeen complained were reduced to a moderate and uniform ad valorem duty. By the operation of another law, called the warehousing act, the fish of the colonies enters our ports in bond, duty free. In this condition it can be afforded cheaper than our own fish, owing to the enjoyment by the colonial fishermen of those superior fishing-grounds, and superior facilities for carrying on the business, which they secure with so much jealousy to themselves. They conse quently now monopolize the foreign trade in our ports. Other domestic regulations to the disadvantage of our own fishermen have contributed to the same end. In this way, a sudden and powerful impulse has been given to the importation of colonial fish into the United States. It was stated in the House of Representatives, in debate, last summer, by a very well-informed member, (Mr. Scudder, of Massachusetts,) that the annual value of the imports of codfish, during the four years next preceding 1846, averaged five thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars, and the average value, annually, during the next four years was fifty-five thousand one hundred and seventy-eight dollars. The annual value of the imports of mackerel for the four years previous to 1846 was two hundred and nineteen thousand six hundred and twenty-six dollars, and the annual value for the four years succeeding 1846 was four hundred and sixty-five thousand eight hundred and six dollars; showing that since 1846 the importation of colonial codfish had increased tenfold, and that of mackerel more than doubled. The import of mackerel for the year 1850-51 was five hundred and fortynine thousand five hundred and twenty-three dollars, being an increase of eighty-three thousand seven hundred and nineteen dollars over the average of the preceding four years.

Such was the treatment of colonial fish in the ports of the United States, while the fishing interest in the colonies was steadily urging upon the home government those complaints

of the encroachments of the American fishermen which led to the naval movement of last summer. If, as Lord Malmesbury intimated to Mr. Lawrence, the late ministry were somewhat remiss in putting a stop to those alleged encroachments, it was probably because they saw that the colonies were gaining a hundred-fold more in the markets of the United States than they could lose from an American fisherman occasionally, by inadvertence, or even design, passing the line of the convention in the eager pursuit of a shoal of mackerel. While the United States were reducing duties on colonial fish, and opening their markets to its importation, it was probably deemed inexpedient to allow the colonies to enforce too keenly their monopoly of the best fishing-grounds. Admitting them, as we did, to a competition with our fishermen, which has given them in our own ports the exclusive possession of our foreign trade, the United States seemed to have earned a title to some little indulgence, instead of increased strictness in the exclusion of their vessels from a competition in those prolific waters whose inexhaustible abundance remains undiminished after the resort of two centuries and a half; and in which the gain of one implies no loss to another.

I have called your attention to these facts, to which I do not recollect to have seen any allusion on your side of the water last summer, in order to show you that if, on the one hand, some encroachments have from time to time been made by our fishermen on the reserved fishing-grounds-a thing impossible to prevent, and of little serious injury-the colonists have, in the mean time, been greatly favored by our legislation. Her Majesty's government will find in this fact the assurance that we are predisposed to arrange the whole question of the fisheries. on a fair and equitable principle of mutual and equal privilege and favor. I hope, in a very short time, to be able to enter upon the negotiation with Mr. Crampton; and it is the President's desire that it should be conducted on the footing of the most liberal reciprocity. He will deem it a piece of good fortune if, among the last acts of his administration, should be a measure calculated to strengthen the friendly relations of the two countries.

As this subject may be one of parliamentary inquiry, and lead to the production of papers, you will read this despatch to the Earl of Malmesbury, and leave a copy of it with him. I remain, with great respect, your obedient servant, EDWARD EVERETT.

P. S. December 23. The foregoing despatch, as its date shows, was prepared some time ago; and, though it had already been submitted to the President for his approval, I had made up my mind to ask his permission to withhold it. The conferences between Mr. Crampton and myself, in reference to the entire question of the fisheries and commercial reciprocity, having made the most encouraging progress, I thought it better, upon the whole, to acquiesce in the injustice, no doubt unintentional, done to my government, to my predecessor, and myself, in Lord Malmesbury's letter to Mr. Crampton of the 10th of August, than to revive a somewhat unpleasant discussion. But there are some portions of Lord Malmesbury's remarks, in reply to Lord Wharncliffe, on the 26th of November, as reported in the London papers, which make it impossible for me to pursue this course.

I am aware of the irregularity of remarking on what is said within the walls of the legislature of a friendly State; but Lord Malmesbury has commented on the debate in the Senate of the United States in July last, and he will not, under the present circumstances, deny me the right of following his example.

I allude to the first portion of Lord Malmesbury's reply to Lord Wharncliffe, in which he endeavors to throw upon the American government, and, individually, upon my predecessor, the responsibility of the alarm of last summer about the fisheries, and even ascribes it (if he is correctly reported, which I am willing to believe is not the case) to a very unworthy motive. Now, I must say more distinctly than I have done in the preceding letter, that Mr. Lawrence's despatches of the 10th and 13th of August, led us to suppose that her Majesty's government felt that they had acted precipitately in directing a naval movement toward the fishing-grounds, on a notice to this government both too short and too general to be of any use. We did not ask or expect that any admission to this effect should be made diplomatically or otherwise; but we certainly did not expect to have the blame transferred to ourselves, with the imputation of unbecoming motives.

After stating that there was no just cause for the publication of Mr. Webster's notice of the 20th of July, Lord Malmesbury is reported to have said: "The noble lord who had just set down, and who had been for some time a resident in the United States, and who knew the influences which periodical events exercised in those localities, might perhaps be able to account for the appearance at that time of a correspondence,

which at another period might never have seen the light." And a little further on, Lord Malmesbury ascribes the preparation of the notice to the excitement induced by the disease, whose fatal termination he handsomely laments-a suggestion, by the way, not in perfect harmony with the imputed motive of political calculation.

But Lord Malmesbury may be assured that the alarm felt by Mr. Webster, and shared by the President and all the members of the Cabinet, was deep and unaffected. It was caused by information received directly from the provinces. Although Mr. Webster's notice was published on the 20th of July, and for the sake of official form was dated at Washington, Mr. Crampton's note of the 5th of July had never been seen by Mr. Webster, who left Washington that day; nor, if it had been seen by him, was it of a nature to relieve the alarm justly caused by the information transmitted from the colonies. Not wishing to prolong this postscript, I forbear to enlarge on the character of this information, and to show, as I could easily do, that it could not but have produced a state of great alarm on the part of our fishing interest. If Lord Malmesbury will reconsider for a moment the necessary inferences from his imputation, (hitherto confined to the party press, for which, during a canvass, nothing is too absurd,) he will feel its extravagance, not to say its cruelty to the living and the dead. It implies that Mr. Webster-of whom in the latter part of his speech Lord Malmesbury speaks in liberal terms (though limiting his eulogy to a period subsequent to the appearance of the notice of the 20th of July)-was capable of getting up, for electioneering purposes, a false and shortlived alarm, which, for the time, menaced the peace of the two countries, but was sure to be exposed by the return of the English mail; conduct, to say the least, which would have been as weak as wicked. What Lord Malmesbury is reported to have called a "correspondence," and a "letter," which might not have seen the light but for the recurrence of certain "periodical events," was no correspondence nor letter, but a notice addressed to our fishermen. It was nothing if not published; and it must be published then, or never.

With respect to the "influence of periodical events," for the existence of which in the United States Lord Malmesbury avouches the personal observation of Lord Wharncliffe, I may be permitted to say that I have resided much longer in England than Lord W. has done in America, and have carefully observed the country under the operation of an event of the kind re.