at importance and value.

The licenses, which are to be granted without charge and on application,
in order to enable our fishermen to enjoy these privileges, are
reasonable and proper checks in the hands of the local authorities to
identify the recipients and prevent abuse, and can form no impediment to
those who intend to use them fairly.

The hospitality secured for our vessels in all cases of actual distress,
with liberty to unload and sell and transship their cargoes, is full and
liberal.

These provisions will secure the substantial enjoyment of the treaty
rights for our fishermen under the treaty of 1818, for which contention
has been steadily made in the correspondence of the Department of State
and our minister at London and by the American negotiators of the
present treaty.

The right of our fishermen under the treaty of 1818 did not extend to
the procurement of distinctive fishery supplies in Canadian ports and
harbors, and one item supposed to be essential--to wit, bait--was
plainly denied them by the explicit and definite words of the treaty of
1818, emphasized by the course of the negotiation and express decisions
which preceded the conclusion of that treaty.

The treaty now submitted contains no provision affecting tariff duties,
and, independently of the position assumed upon the part of the United
States that no alteration in our tariff or other domestic legislation
could be made as the price or consideration of obtaining the rights of
our citizens secured by treaty, it was considered more expedient to
allow any change in the revenue laws of the United States to be made by
the ordinary exercise of legislative will and in the promotion of the
public interests. Therefore the addition to the free list of fish, fish
oil, whale and seal oil, etc., recited in the last article of the
treaty, is wholly left to the action of Congress; and in connection
therewith the Canadian and Newfoundland right to regulate sales of bait
and other fishing supplies within their own jurisdiction is recognized,
and the right of our fishermen to freely purchase these things is made
contingent by this treaty upon the action of Congress in the
modification of our tariff laws.

Our social and commercial intercourse with those populations who have
been placed upon our borders and made forever our neighbors is made
apparent by a list of United States common carriers, marine and inland,
connecting their lines with Canada, which w