ons to enter their ports and harbors, to purchase supplies and
transship commodities. He said that they subjected our citizens,
engaged in fishing enterprises in waters adjacent to their northeastern
shore, to numerous vexatious interferences and annoyances, had
seized and sold their vessels upon slight pretexts, and had otherwise
treated them in a rude, harsh, and oppressive manner. He further
said:

"This conduct has been justified by Great Britain and Canada, by
the claim that the treaty of 1818 permitted it, and upon the ground
that it was necessary to the proper protection of Canadian interests.
We deny that treaty agreements justify these acts, and we further
maintain that, aside from any treaty restraints, of disputed
interpretation, the relative positions of the United States and
Canada as near neighbors, the growth of our joint commerce, the
development and prosperity of both countries, which amicable
relations surely guaranty, and, above all, the liberality always
extended by the United States to the people of Canada, furnished
motives for kindness and consideration higher and better than treaty
covenants."

I agreed with the President in his arraignment of the Canadian
authorities for denying to our fishing vessels the benefit of the
enlightened measures adopted in later years by commercial nations,
especially by the United States and Great Britain. We admitted
fish free of duty into our country, while Canada refused to our
fishermen the right to purchase bait and other supplies in Canadian
ports, thus preventing our fishermen from competing with the
Canadians on the open sea. The President undertook, by treaty, to
correct this injustice, but the Senate thought that the provisions
of the treaty were not adequate for that purpose, and declined to
ratify it. He thereupon recommended that Congress provide certain
measures of retaliation, which, in the opinion of the Senate, would
have inflicted greater injury to the United States than to Canada.
This honest difference of opinion, not based upon party lines,
opened up the consideration of all our commercial relations with
Canada. The speech made by me dealt with the policy of the United
States with Canada in the past and for the future, and led me to
the expression of my opinion that Canada should be, and would be,
represented in the parliament of Great Britain or the Congress of
the United States, with the expression of my hope of its being
annexed to