egally come into force
until it had been formally ratified by the parliament of Great
Britain, the congress of the United States, and the several
legislatures of the British provinces. It exempted from customs duties
on both sides of the line certain articles which were the growth and
produce of the British colonies and of the United States--the
principal being grain, flour, breadstuffs, animals, fresh, smoked, and
salted meats, fish, lumber of all kinds, poultry, cotton, wool, hides,
ores of metal, pitch, tar, ashes, flax, hemp, rice, and unmanufactured
tobacco. The people of the United States and of the British provinces
were given an equal right to navigate the St. Lawrence river, the
Canadian canals and Lake Michigan. No export duty could be levied on
lumber cut in Maine and passing down the St. John or other streams in
New Brunswick. The most important question temporarily settled by the
treaty was the fishery dispute which had been assuming a troublesome
aspect for some years previously. The government at Washington then
began to raise the issue that the three mile limit to which their
fishermen could be confined should follow the sinuosities of the
coasts, including bays; the object being to obtain access to the
valuable mackerel fisheries of the Bay of Chaleurs and other waters
claimed to be exclusively within the territorial jurisdiction of the
maritime provinces. The imperial government generally sustained the
contention of the provinces--a contention practically supported by the
American authorities in the case of Delaware, Chesapeake, and other
bays on the coasts of the United States--that the three mile limit
should be measured from a line drawn from headland to headland of all
bays, harbours, and creeks. In the case of the Bay of Fundy, however,
the imperial government allowed a departure from this general
principle when it was urged by the Washington government that one of
its headlands was in the territory of the United States, and that it
was an arm of the sea rather than a bay. The result was that foreign
fishing vessels were shut out only from the bays on the coasts of Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick within the Bay of Fundy. All these questions
were, however, placed in abeyance, for twelve years, by the Reciprocity
Treaty of 1854, which provided that the inhabitants of the United
States could take fish of any kind, except shell fish, on the sea
coasts, and shores, in the bays, harbours, and creeks of any