The treaty was signed on June 5th, 1854, by Lord Elgin on the part of Great Britain, and by the Honourable W.L.  Marcy, secretary of state, on behalf of the United States, but it did not legally 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 British province, without any restriction as to distance, and had also permission to land on these coasts and shores for the purpose of drying their nets and curing their fish.  The same privileges were extended to British citizens on the eastern sea coasts and shores of the United States, north of the 36th parallel of north latitude—­privileges