ton, question was ever made of the right of American fishermen to purchase bait and other supplies in Canadian ports, or that such privileges were ever denied them.

Moreover, in Mr. Bayard's letter to Minister West of May 10, 1886, he recites the

gradual extension from time to time of the provisions of Article I of the convention of July 3, 1815, providing for reciprocal liberty of commerce between the United States and the territories of Great Britain in Europe so as gradually to include the colonial possessions of Great Britain in North America and the West Indies within the results of that treaty.

And then Mr. Bayard proceeds to make the following statement: President Jackson's proclamation of October 5, 1830, created a reciprocal commercial intercourse, on terms of perfect equality of flag, between this country and the British American dependencies by repealing the navigation acts of April 18, 1818, May 15, 1820, and March 1, 1823, and admitting British vessels and their cargoes to an entry in the ports of the United States from the islands, provinces, and colonies of Great Britain on or near the American continent and north or east of the United States."

And thereupon Mr. Bayard further says to Mr. West:

I ask you to consider the results of excluding American vessels, duly possessed of permits from their own Government to touch and trade at Canadian ports as well as to engage in deep-sea fishing, from exercising freely the customary and reasonable rights and privileges of trade in the ports of the British' colonies as are freely allowed to British vessels in all the ports of the United States under the laws and regulations to which I have adverted.

Among these customary rights and privileges may be enumerated the purchase of ship supplies of every nature, making repairs, the shipment of crews in whole or part, and the purchase of ice and bait for use in deep-sea fishing. Concurrently, these usual, rational, and convenient privileges are freely extended to and are fully enjoyed by the Canadian merchant marine of all occupations, including fishermen in the ports of the United States. The question therefore arises whether such a construction is admissible as would convert the treaty of 1818 from being an instrumentality for the protection of the inshore fisheries along the described ports of the British American coast into a pretext or means of obstructing the business of deep-sea fishing by citizens of the United States, and of interrupting and destroying the commercial intercourse that since the treaty of 1818, and independent of any treaty whatever, has grown up and now exists under the concurrent and friendly laws and mercantile regulations of the respective countries.

I may recall to your attention the fact that a proposition to exclude the vessels of the United States engaged in fishing from carrying also merchandise was made by the British negotiators of the treaty of 1818, but being resisted by the American negotiators was abandoned. This fact would seem clearly to indicate that the business of fishing did not then and does not now disqualify a vessel from also trading in the regular ports of entry.

In his speech of April 10 Sir Charles Tupper states this contention of Mr. Bayard and makes the best reply he can to it, as follows:

It was claimed by the Government of the United States in 1818 that as no commercial vessel could come into the waters of British North America from the United States, there was no intercourse; that those were privileges given to the fishing vessels by that treaty beyond anything that was enjoyed by any other class of vessels. And when a changed condition of things came about, when the commercial arrangement of 1830 had, as they contended, entirely changed the status of their fishing vessels in our waters-since, as they said, under that commercial arrangement it was provided that their trading vessels could enter freely the ports of British North America, and our trading vessels could enter their ports, as there was no exemption or exclusion of fishing vessels, they claimed that rights had been acquired by the fishing vessels that entirely took them out of the category of the treaty of 1818, under which they were restricted from going into our waters for any but the four purposes.

Sir Charles then proceeds to assert that the contention is unfounded, because the arrangement of 1830 was a commercial arrangement, and that the king's order in council was "silent as to fishing vessels." He then says:

The treaty solemnly declared that the people of the United States renounced forever the right to claim for a fishing vessel any such commercial privileges whatever. And under those circumstances it is a principle in law, constitutional as well as general law, and, I believe, accepted by all countries, that you can

not repeal and change and alter a specific provision by a general one, unless some arrangement had been subsequently provided as to such specific provision. The general terms as to vessels in the commercial arrangement of 1830 and the absence of any reference to fishing vessels left fishing vessels exactly in the same position as they were before.

This argument of Sir Charles Tupper that a broad international arrangement giving absolute commercial freedom to all vessels does not include fishing vessels is quite as weak as the proposition that the word forever" in an agreement can be pleaded against a different contract subsequently made.

The only answers made to Mr. Bayard's claim for commercial rights for fishing vessels by Mr. George E. Foster, the very able and intensely unfriendly Canadian minister of marine and fisheries, in his long report inclosed in Mr. Harding's note of August 2, 1886, and in his shorter report of June 5, 1886, are a bare denial that the later commercial arrangements either extended or restricted the terms of the convention of 1818, and a reference to the fact that no such allegation was set up when that convention was made the basis of further privileges in the treaty of Washington.

It is a sufficient reply to Mr. Foster to say that the further privileges secured by the treaty of Washington were an exact repetition of those of the reciprocity treaty of 1854, and in neither of those treaties were commercial rights for fishing vessels in the ports of Canada expressly stipulated for, because they had in fact never been refused after 1830, and are now only refused as a means of worrying the United States into another reciprocity treaty.

The claim for commercial privileges for all our American vessels in Canadian ports thus clearly and cogently stated by Secretary_Bayard was ably re-enforced by all the other representations made to England which proceeded from the State Department and Minister Phelps, and was fully sustained by declarations from committees, Senators, and Representatives in Congress without dissent and without distinction of party. There is little reason to doubt that if it had been firmly adhered to it would have been allowed by, the British Government, which would have overruled the unreasonable violence of Canada.

The first yielding of our Government was seen in the appointment of a commission to negotiate. Even after this mistake success might have been attained. It was a necessity to the political fortunes of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain that he should negotiate some treaty. He had abandoned the liberal party in Great Britain, betrayed the cause of Ireland, and made an unnatural alliance with his former political enemies, who sent him to this country to get him temporarily out of the way. If he had been obliged to return without negotiating a treaty he would have been the laughing-stock of England, and he knew it. His anxieties and his fears were apparent to all close observers; that he would concede substantially all that our Government had claimed there was no reasonable doubt.

But it happened that Mr. Bayard was even more anxious than Mr. Chamberlain. Perhaps the vanity of the aged statesman, the desire to be known as the negotiator of the Bayard-Chamberlain treaty, overcame any wish he had to protect the rights of the New England fishermen and to maintain the national honor: and so Mr. Chamberlain at last, suddenly and unexpectedly, obtained an easy victory.

But there must have been more in the surrender than the vanity and decrepitude of Mr. Bayard. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that a combination was formed between the leaders of the Democratic party to sacrifice the interests of the New England fishermen and to

break down our tariff system. The utterances of Sir Charles Tupper, which I have quoted conclusively prove this. To carry out this plan diplomatic correspondence was dropped; an unconstitutional commission was created; the demand for commercial rights was abandoned; a surrender was made to all the Canadian theories concerning the fisheries, and the initial step in the main purpose of the alliance was taken in Article XV of the treaty, which is intended to force Congress to remove some of our customs duties. Southern Democrats gave the orders to Northern Democrats; the Democratic party abandoned its spasmodic attempt to defend the fishermen against Canadian aggression; and the great object of this Democratic-British alliance now is to pass the Mills bill, keep the Democratic party in power, and destroy the American tariff system.

These unpatriotic and injurious assaults upon American interests of the combined forces of English free-traders and Southern Democrats should be met at the threshold by the rejection of this discreditable treaty. The admissions made by its negotiators will doubtless make it more difficult to obtain from England our just rights. But asserted with moderation, patience and firmness they will surely be granted. England will not in 1888 refuse to grant us the article of the treaty of 1815 with the two words "in Europe" omitted, which is all we need desire, as follows:

ARTICLE 1. There shall be between the territories of the United States of America and all the territories of Her Britannic Majesty a reciprocal liberty of commerce. The inhabitants of the two countries, respectively, shall have liberty freely and securely to come with their ships and cargoes to all such places, ports, and rivers in the territories aforesaid, to which other foreigners are permitted to come, to enter into the same and to remain and reside in any parts of the said territories, respectively; also, to hire and occupy houses and warehouses for the purposes of their commerce; and generally the merchants and traders of each nation, respectively, shall enjoy the most complete protection and security for their commerce, but subject always to the laws and statutes of the two countries, respectively.

The bugbear of war need not frighten any one. England never went to war with any nation to force the opening of ports for trade, except with China to compel the admission of opium. Even the excessive retaliation which it has been intimated the President will attempt if this pet treaty shall be rejected would be no cause for war. A decision to give to Canadian fishing vessels in American ports only the same privileges which are given American vessels in Canadian ports, and to exclude Canadian fish from our markets, will at any time give the New England fishermen all they desire. Retaliation to this extent the President, who is not always under the control of Southern Democrats, will doubtless first adopt; there will probably never be occasion to resort to more.

The question of the rights and privileges of American fishermen in the waters, on the coasts, and in the harbors of Canada, in recently dealing with which the United States has occupied the position of an inferior nation, dealing with one vastly superior, if taken up for consideration by our Government in a spirit not sectional, but national, and treated in appropriate negotiations with England, as it should be dealt with in this era of international intercourse by two great nations, equal in dignity, honor, and power, may yet be, even by this Administration, satisfactorily and honorably settled; if it is not it certainly will be so adjusted by the administration which will come into power on the 4th of March, 1889.

In this connection it is interesting to notice the contrast between two distinguished New England Democrats. One of them, Mr. Will

iam L. Putnam, a lawyer of ability and amiability, employed by the United States to defend fishermen's rights, enters into a combination to sacrifice them; his head is enlarged by the novelty of his fictitious title of plenipotentiary; he is carried off his feet by association with British aristocrats; he officiates as an illegally appointed member of an unconstitutional commission; signs, when ordered, an ignominious treaty; and now pretentiously offers himself as a Democratic candidate for governor of Maine on the platform of the surrender of our fishery interests and the exemption of imported Canadian merchandise from our tariff duties.

The other, Mr. Charles Levi Woodbury, is a Democrat of the purest water. By age, inheritance, association, general professional learning, profound study of the question, Mr. Woodbury is entitled to speak with authority. He is one of the best admiralty and revenue lawyers we have. He was district attorney uuder President Buchanan; his father was Secretary of the Treasury under General Jackson. He knows this fishery question as he knows his alphabet. He was taught by his father; he has been familiar with it for forty years; his Democracy can never be questioned, nor can his patriotism. New Hampshire Democrats and Republicans alike regard him with respect and honor as one of the ablest and truest of the sons of the Granite State. I desire to read a letter written by Mr. Woodbury May 4 to the New York Sun:

To the Editor of the Sun:

SIR: The Chamberlain treaty is now before the Senate. It surrenders everything the United States have contended for since 1838, when the dispute on the 3-mile limit began, contentions which the British authorities have assented to or temporized about as often as pressed, so that really in no entire year since then have they insisted on enforcing their headland theory.

The commercial rights of the United States under the agreements of 1830 are utterly abandoned by Mr. Bayard after much previous insistance on their obligation.

The rights of common humanity toward our vessels in distress, accorded everywhere except on the Canadian coast, are hereafter to be allowed only upon the condition that the United States shall change its present registry laws by repealing them, and enacting such new ones as are acceptable to the British Government before going into effect. This of course leaves the humanity of Canada to vessels of the United States in distress withheld until the United States shall pay the consideration by repealing its laws and making such new ones. Commercial intercourse by our fishing vessels is disallowed, but they may be permitted to buy a narrow line of supplies, whose extent would not exceed $50,000 a year, when the United States shall have repealed existing duties, now over $611,000 a year, on Canadian fish and oil, and made them free in our markets.

This is the substance of the treaty, all losses to the United States both in honor and profit. General Jackson and Mr. McLane, Van Buren and Forsyth, Stevenson and Everett, Webster, Rush, Grant, Evarts, and even Bayard and Phelps, for two of their official years, are buried beneath this treaty and their memories dishonored by its retreat from their patriotic contentions for American rights. Cavilers have said the treaty of 1818 was wrung from our weakness, but this treaty, made in the hour of our strength, surrenders what that never did-our markets; and it doubles the waters from which it requires we shall be forever excluded.

The consequence of adopting this treaty would be the destruction of the fishery under the American flag, the paralysis of our hope of naval power, and a British monopoly of our markets, aggrandizing its dangerous naval power. Let the treaty be rejected.

BOSTON, May 4, 1888.

CHARLES LEVI WOODBURY.

Mr. Woodbury's is the courage for America of an Andrew Jackson Democrat. Mr. Putnam's is the subserviency towards England of a Grover Cleveland Democrat.

Mr. President, it is not alone in dealing with the New England fishery interests that the State Department has abandoned traditional American policy and humiliated the United States in the eyes of foreign

nations. It has also formally surrendered the Monroe doctrine, and the surrender has been submitted to by Southern Democrats without one dissenting voice. Nothing so plainly shows the change that has come over the spirit of the Democracy of the South occasioned by their unsuccessful attempt at rebellion as their indifference to the encroachments of European nations on the North American continent. Once au assault upon the Monroe doctrine by a President, Whig or Democrat, would have brought every Democratic Senator to his feet with bold and patriotic denunciations. Now, not one of them so much as notices the ignominious betrayal of the interests of the United States in connection with the American Isthmus by their President and their Secretary of State.

Upon no one subject have American statesmen been more emphatic or so unanimous as they have in declaring that European powers shall obtain no new foothold in the western hemisphere.

John Quincy Adams when Secretary of State wrote to the Russian minister at Washington:

We should assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishment.

Jefferson, on the 24th of October, 1823, wrote to President Monroe that the

object is to introduce and establish the American system of keeping out of our land all foreign powers; of never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the affairs of our nation.

Madison, in a note to Jefferson early in November, 1823, said:

In the great struggle of the epoch between liberty and despotism we owe it to ourselves to sustain the former, in this hemisphere at least.

In July, 1823, Mr. Adams, in a letter to Mr. Middleton, further declared that the claim then pressed by Russia to possessions on the northwestern coast of North America was not conducive to the peace of the world.

He said:

With the exception of the British establishments north of the United States, the remainder of both the American continents must henceforth be left to the management of American hands.

President Monroe, in his annual message to Congress dated December 2, 1823, giving an account of the claims of Russia on the northwest and of Spain on her late colonies, declared that

The occasion had been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonizaon by any European powers.

President Adams, in his message of March, 1826, speaking of advantages to be derived from independent American states, says that among the subjects of consultation proposed at Panama was—

the means of making effectual the assertion of that principle to permit no colonial lodgment or establishment of European jurisdiction upon its own soil, The same policy was urged by Mr. Clay, as Secretary of State, in correspondence with Mexico, and it was adopted by the four states represented at Panama.

President Polk, in his message of December, 1845, after approving the Monroe declaration, says:

No future European colony or domain shall, with our consent, be planted or established on any part of the American continent.

President Grant was firmly in favor of the Monroe doctrine and of CHANDLER-2