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 was returned by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Senate on the 7th day of February, 1888, in answer to a resolution of that body; and this is instructive as to the great volume of mutually profitable interchanges which has come into existence during the last half century.

This intercourse is still but partially developed, and if the amicable enterprise and wholesome rivalry between the two populations be not obstructed the promise of the future is full of the fruits of an unbounded prosperity on both sides of the border.

The treaty now submitted to you has been framed in a spirit of liberal equity and reciprocal benefits, in the conviction that mutual advantage and convenience are the only permanent foundation of peace and friendship between States, and that with the adoption of the agreement now placed before the Senate a beneficial and satisfactory intercourse between the two countries will be established so as to secure perpetual peace and harmony.

In connection with the treaty herewith submitted I deem it also my duty to transmit to the Senate a written offer or arrangement, in the nature of a modus vivendi, tendered after the conclusion of the treaty on the part of the British plenipotentiaries, to secure kindly and peaceful relations during the period that may be required for the consideration of the treaty by the respective Governments and for the enactment of the necessary legislation to carry its provisions into effect if approved.

This paper, freely and on their own motion signed by the British conferees, not only extends advantages to our fishermen pending the ratification of the treaty, but appears to have been dictated by a friendly and amicable spirit.