Daily American telegraph., 1852-08-21
AMERICAN TELEGRAPH.
THE FISHERIES.
SPEECH OF WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,
august Ia, 1852.

august IA, 1852.
EcoNcLUDED.
Sir, it has been complained by the honorable
Senator from Louisiana, Mr.. SouLE, that Mr.
Webster conceded too much in his official no
tice of July 6, 1851. Now, here is Mr.. Web
sters language. After quoting the treaty, he
says
at would appear that, by strict and rigid con-
sfrnction Of ts article, fishing vessels Of the United
States are procuded from entering into tho bays" &c
And, in the same connection, he adds:
| at was undoubtedly an ocsysight In tie concen-
te,tion Of 1878 10 make large concessions to Eng
land."
That is to say, it was an oversight to use
language in that convention, which, by strict
and rigid construction, might be made to yield
the freedom Of the great bays.
| 1t is then question Of mere verbal criticism
The Secretary does not admit that the rigorous
construction isthe just and true one. And SO he
does not admit that there is any concession
in the sense of the term which the honorable
Senator adopts. Now, other honorable Sena-
tors, if recollect arght-and particularly that
very accurate and exceedingly strong-minded
Senator, the gentleman from Massachusetts,,
| Mr.. DAVIS conceded that the treaty wouid
bear this rigorous construction, insisting never
theless, just as the Secretary Of State did,
that it was a forced and unjust one The
Senator from Louisiana dissents from him and
other Senators, and maintains that it will not
bear that construction ut all because he says
that the other portions of the convention show
that the bays" described must be bays with
in the British dominions He adds that, in
order to bring bay within the dominion of
any power, it must be such that its passage to
i ha oh oil not 1civ in yUid
and that the shores on both sides belong to
the power claiming dominion over the water.
| cannot assent to the force of this argument of
the honorable Senator from Louisiana. | am
the more inclined to 60 against it, because |
believe it is getting pretty late in the day to
find the Secretary of State wrong in the tech
nical and legal construction of an instrument.
1t might bring doubt over his eminent char
acter as a lawyer and diplomatist Let us test
the argument. The honorable Senator says,
that where the Government occupies both sides
of the coast and where the strait through
which the waters of the bay flow into the ocean
is not more than six miles wide, then there is
dominion over it.
Now, then, the Gut of Canso is most in
dispensable communication for our fishermen
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Northumber-
land Straits and to the Gulf of st. Lawrence,
for reason which any one will very readily
see by referring to the map; yet the Gut Of
Canso is only three quarters of a mile wide. |
should be sorry to adopt an argument which
Great Britain might turn against us, to exclude
us from that important passage
Again recall the honorable Senator's argu-
ment viz: Two things unite to give country
dominion over an inland sea. The first is, that
the land on both sides must be within the do
/ inin ~ tha al
ton, and then that the strait is not more than
six miles wide; but that if the strait is more
than six miles wide, no such jurisdiction can
be claimed" Now, sir, this argument seems
to me to prove too much. think it would di-
vest the United States of the harbor of Boston,
all the land around which belongs to Massa-
chusetts or the United States, while the mouth
of the bay is six miles wide. II would surren-
der our dominion over Long Island Sound-a
dominion which think the State of New York
and the United States would not willingly give
up. 1t would surrender Delaware Bay; it
would surrender, | think, Albemarle Sound
and the Chesapeake Bay; and | believe it
would surrender the Bay of Monterey, and per-
haps the Bay Of San Francisco, on the Pacific
coast
Sir, it seems to me that we have been labor
ing for the last fortnight under a strange mis-
apprehension that we have been arguing here
the freedom of the seas-of open and broad
seas-the freedom of great bays, which freedom
is not now practically denied, or newly brought
in question. 1t is true that the British Govern
ment deny our right to enter the great bays,
but it is equally true that they have done SO
for thirty years; and it is equally true, more
over, that, for thirty years, we have practically
exercised the right, and that we are exercising
it now just as we have done throughout all
that period.
Now how has all this confusion come into
the Senate, and how is it that we are alarming,
perplexing, and bewildering the country in SO
idle and cruel q manner! What ground has
there been for assuming that the British Gov
ernment had determined to revise the conven-
tion of 1918, and to enforce its construction by
arms? On what did Senators base their appre-
tensions and build this excitement? The hon
orable Senator from Michigan Mr. CAssl
quoted from three newspapers, but neither OF
them was an organ of the Imperial Government,
nor even a British newspaper. He quoted from
merely Provincial newspapers; and | believe
that two Of the three papers were antl-mln-
isterial papers. Moreover, such as they were,
they did not assume to speaklby authority, but
only on report, and by way of conjecture.
Perhaps with those newspapers "the wish
was father to the thought" and they thought
that their brethren down South would soon
take a new lesson from the presence of an
assumed extraordinary force in the fisheries.
My honorable friend from Louisiana based
his censure on the Administration for possibly
negotiating away valuable national rights on
what he called "semi-o official announcement
of the fact in the Telegraph" q small news
paper in this city, which is not as | under
stand, an organ of this Administration, but
can pretend to no more than desire, per-
haps, if it should survive, as fear it may not,
to become the organ of a future one. The
honorable Senator, however, most candidly con-
fessed, when called upon to name the paper,