|i' -sU^Ii* ONIVV'.H; l.w: iJiihAi' V (JBDintiutgf) (ZEDition CANADA AND ITS PROVINCES IN TWENTY-TWO VOLUMES AND INDEX VOLUME VIII THE DOMINION POLITICAL EVOLUTION PART III The Edinburgh Edttio7t of ' Canada and its Provinces ' is limited to 8j5 Impressions on All-Rag Watermarked Paper This Impression is Number. .. I. iQ..}?. PhWoyrevvffR-Annsn, G! LORD ASHBURTON From an engraving in the Dominion Archives CANADA AND ITS PROVINCES A HISTORY OF THE CANADIAN PEOPLE AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS BY ONE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES GENERAL EDITORS: ADAM SHORTT AND ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY VOLUME VIII THE DOMINION POLITICAL EVOLUTION EDINBURGH EDITION PRINTED BY T. & A. CONSTABLE AT THE EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR THE PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION OF CANADA LIMITED TORONTO 1914 -ii- O 'J Xe* d ij Copyright in all countries subscribing to tht Berne Convention — F S55c v.s CONTENTS FAQB. THE FISHERY ARBITRATIONS. By N. B. Wormwith I. THE NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERY DISPUTES . 68l Status prior to the Treaty of 1818— Interpretation of the Treaty of 1818—The Arbitration before The Hague Tribunal 11. THE BERING SEA FUR-SEAL DISPUTES .... 725 BOUNDARY DISPUTES AND TREATIES. By James White I. FROM FUNDY TO JUAN DE FUCA . -751 Introductory—St Croix River Commission—Passamaquoddy Islands—The 'Due North' and 'Highlands' Lines—Arbitra- tion by the King of the Netherlands—The British Statement Statement on the Part of the United States—Second British Statement—Second United States Statement—Award of the — King of the Netherlands — Frontier Strife ' Battle of the Maps ' — National Rights through Occupation — Results of the Ashburton Treaty—Through the St Lawrence Basin to Lake of the Woods—Boundary from Lake Huron to the North-West Angle of Lake of the Woods—Review of the Awarded Boundary under Articles VI and vil of the Treaty of Ghent — Bryce-Root Treaty, 1908 — From Lake of the Woods to the Paciflc Ocean — Historical Review — British Statement—Statement of the United States—Occurrences, 1820-1840—The Oregon Treaty— Settlement in the Disputed Area—Review of the Settlement—San Juan Controversy Award of the German Emperor — Hudson's Bay Company Claims—Surveys of the Boundary IL ONTARIO-MANITOBA BOUNDARY ..... 878 Resume of Differences—Hudson's Bay Company's Charter, 1670— Discoveries and Settlements in the Bay—Treaty of Neutrality, 1686 — Treaty of Ryswick, 1697 — Treaty of Utrecht, 1713—Treaty of Paris, 1763—The Proclamation of 1763—The Quebec Act, 1774—The Constitutional Act, 1791 —Judicature Acts, 1803 and 1818—Rupert's Land Act, 1870 — viii THE DOMINION: POLITICAL EVOLUTION PAGB Arbitration of Boundary, 1878— Reference to the Imperial Privy Council, 1884 — Review of the Differences — Map Evidence before the Privy Council — Review of the Case before the Privy Council BOUNDARY III. LABRADOR-CANADA ..... 908 The Royal Proclamation of 1763—The Quebec Act, 1774 Imperial Legislation subsequent to 1774 — Historical Conclusions IV. ALASKA BOUNDARY. -917 Ukase of 1821 — Negotiations between the United States and Russia—Joint Negotiation of Great Britain and the United States with Russia—The Monroe Doctrine— instructions to Bagot—Bagot's Proposals— Modified Instructions to Bagot Instructions to Stratford Canning—Treaty of February 28, 1825—The ' Dryad' Case— Neutralization during the Crimean War—Sale of Russian America to the United States—British Request for Joint Survey, 1872—Boundary on Stikine River —Dall-Dawson Correspondence—British Protests—Boundary Survey Conventions, 1892 and 1895—Friction at Chilkoot and White Passes, 1896 — Joint High Commission, 1898-99 Alaska Boundary Convention, 1903 — Alaska Boundary Tribunal— Decision of Tribunal 7e Portland Canal—British Case—United States Case—British Counter Case— United States Counter Case—Decision of the Tribunal—Review ILLUSTRATIONS LORD ASHBURTON Frontispiece From an engraving in the Dominion Archives NORTH ATLANTIC FISHERY LIMITS UNDER TREATY OF 1818 (MAP) .... Facingpage eZ(> NORTHERN PART OF THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN (MAP RELATING TO THE BERING SEA SEAL FISHERIES) ,,726 ISLANDS IN THE BAY OF FUNDY (MAP) . „ 766 EASTERN CANADA-UNITED STATES BOUNDARY (MAP) ,,782 JAMES COOK ,,846 From tile original picture by Dance in the Gallery of Greenwich Hospital SAN JUAN WATER BOUNDARY (MAP) , . „ 870 ONTARIO-MANITOBA BOUNDARY (MAP) . „ 894 CANADA-LABRADOR BOUNDARY (MAP) . „ 910 ALASKA BOUNDARY (MAP) .... ,,918 THE FISHERY ARBITRATIONS THE FISHERY ARBITRATIONS I THE NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERY DISPUTES January 29, 1909, the United States and Great ON Britain entered into a special treaty agreement for the submission to arbitration of all questions relating to the fisheries on the coasts of Canada and New- foundland. For over a century and a quarter the dispute had been carried on with more or less virulence, and on several occasions had brought the two nations to the verge of war. It was not a controversy that through lapse of time had acquired merely historic interest ; it affected interests that were substantial and in some respects vital to portions of each nation. The views of both countries had been so long maintained and so strenuously urged that neither could with grace retreat from the position it had taken. The national honour of each was in a measure involved. Through the participation of many of the ablest and most honoured statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic, the controversy had acquired that sanctity which the sentiment of a nation gives to the assertion of its rights. From the point of view of international law, the questions involved were of special interest and of the utmost consequence, not only to the two powers directly concerned, but also to every nation of the world. Every consideration that moves a sovereign nation to regard and maintain the interests of its own people urged Great Britain and the United States to press their views of this controversy. 682 THE FISHERY ARBITRATIONS Status prior to the Treaty of i8i8 Dispute between the colonies and the mother country on the fisheries question first arose in the years immediately preceding the revolt of the American colonies. The nations of Europe had been struggling for upwards of a century for the possession of the fisheries in the northern parts of North America. France, as the principal settler there, had long claimed the exclusive right to them. Great Britain, moved in no small degree by the value of these fisheries, had won Canada from France, and had limited by treaty, within a narrow compass, the right of France to any share in the fisheries. Spain, upon some claim of prior discovery, had for some time enjoyed a share of the fishery on the Banks, but at the last treaty of peace, in 1763, had expressly renounced it. At the commencement of the American Revolution, therefore, these fisheries belonged exclusively to the British nation. The colonists of Massachusetts and other New England states, as British subjects, had continuously resorted to the fishing-grounds, which were an important source of living and revenue to them. Though the fisheries are relatively unimportant in modern times, they were of vital importance to New England in 1782. The reigning toast in Massachusetts was, ' May the United States ever ! maintain their rights to the fisheries ' The American colonists considered that these fisheries had been discovered, exploited and developed by them ; that they had been won by their toil, by their blood, by their activity ; and when peace began to be talked about in 1782 they contended that they had as good a right to maintain a claim to con- tinue in the enjoyment of them as British subjects across the sea, and a better right than the new subjects in Canada. And so the American peace negotiators, Franklin, Adams and Jay, were instructed by Congress ' that in no case, by any treaty of peace, the common right of fishing be given up.' The Treaty of 1783.—Resolutely maintaining that posi- tion, the United States plenipotentiaries at Paris were able NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERY DISPUTES 683 to exact as the price of peace from Great Britain, in the position of weakness in which she found herself in 1783, the terms of a treaty by which equal rights with British subjects to take fish of every kind in all British North American waters were given to every inhabitant of the United States. The right was unlimited as to any distance from shore. It was absolutely the same right as British subjects themselves had, except that American fishermen were not permitted to dry and cure their fish on the Island of Newfoundland. The Treaty of Ghent, 1814.—No question with respect to the fisheries article of the treaty of 1783 or the use of the fisheries under it arose until the close of the War of 1812, when Great Britain took the position that the rights of American fishermen had been abrogated by that war, the United States insisting with equal vigour that those rights were perpetual. When the negotiators met at Ghent in 1 8 14 to sign a treaty of peace, it was found impossible to reach any common ground, and the whole subject of the fisheries was left open by that treaty as an unsettled subject of difference between the two governments, and, possibly, as Henry Clay expressed it, ' as a nest egg for another war.' Period from 1814-18.—Continual collision and friction were of course inevitable. Scarcely six months after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, occasion arose for the renewal of the controversy as to whether the inshore fisheries of the treaty of 1783 had survived the War of 1812. On June 19, 1815, occurred what is known as the 'Jaseur incident.' Captain Lock of H.M.S. Jaseur warned an American fi.shing vessel, engaged in cod-fishing about forty-five miles distant from Cape Sable, not to come within sixty miles of the coast.