ss practical
importance than has been supposed, for it does not, if in force, place
any restraints upon the United States as to the method of dealing with
imported merchandise destined for the United States arriving at a
Canadian port for transportation to the United States, or of merchandise
passing through Canadian territory from one place in the United States
to another. It would be no infraction either of the letter or of the
spirit of the treaty if we should stop, unload, and carefully inspect
every vehicle arriving at our border with such merchandise; nor, on the
other hand, would Canada violate her obligations under the treaty by a
like treatment of merchandise imported through the port of New York on
its arrival in Canada. Neither Government has placed itself under any
restraint as to merchandise intended for the use of its own people
when such merchandise comes within its own territory. The question,
therefore, as to how we shall deal with merchandise imported by our own
people through a Canadian port and with merchandise passing from one
place in the United States to another through Canadian territory is
wholly one of domestic policy and law.

I turn now to consider the legislation of Congress upon this subject,
upon which, as it seems to me, the duties of the Treasury and the rights
of our people as to those phases of the transportation question to which
I have just alluded wholly depend. Sections 3005 and 3006 of the Revised
Statutes, which are taken from the act of July 28, 1866, entitled
"An act to protect the revenue, and for other purposes" (14 U.S.
Statutes at Large, p. 328), are as follows:

SEC. 3005. All merchandise arriving at the ports of New York, Boston,
Portland in Maine, or any other port specially designated by the
Secretary of the Treasury, and destined for places in the adjacent
British Provinces, or arriving at the port of [_Point Isabel_]
[Brownsville] in Texas, or any other port specially designated by the
Secretary of the Treasury, and destined for places in the Republic of
Mexico, may be entered at the custom-house and conveyed in transit
through the territory of the United States without the payment of
duties, under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may
prescribe.

SEC. 3006. Imported merchandise in bond, or duty paid, and products
or manufactures of the United States, may, with the consent of the
proper authorities of the British Provinces