BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 



size be submitted from the Boston office. The result of 

 the correspondence that ensued was that the Secretary 

 authorized Mr. Lorenzo Sabine, of Framingham, to write 

 a report somewhat more elaborate than what was at first 

 intended. 



Mr. Sabine was well qualified for such a mission. At 

 the time of writing he was Congressman from Massa- 

 chusetts, he had served three terms in the Maine legisla- 

 ture, had been collector of the Passamaquoddy district in 

 Maine for several years, and had witnessed personally much 

 of the trouble between our fishermen and the Canadian 

 officials in the waters of eastern Maine. Furthermore, 

 he was probably the best informed person in America on 

 the subject of the fisheries. For twenty years he had been 

 collecting papers and documents with the purpose of writ- 

 ing a comprehensive history of the fisheries of the United 

 States. His valuable work, "The American Loyalists,' 

 appearing six years previous, had placed him in the ranks 

 of historians of the time. So that the selection of Mr. 

 Sabine to submit a report on the fisheries was most op- 

 portune. 



An examination of the Report furnishes strong internal 

 evidence that Mr. Sabine had already completed a por- 

 tion of his history of the fisheries before he was com- 

 missioned to submit a report upon the subject. This view 

 would be strengthened by the fact that less than ten 

 months were used in writing the report. That part of 

 the report that deals with the fisheries down to the Decla- 

 ration of Independence about one-half of the work was 

 of the least importance to the statesmen of 1854, for whose 

 benefit the report was especially prepared. Yet in his 

 consideration of the colonial fisheries, Mr. Sabine goes into 

 details of time and place as no other writer or set of writers 

 has done. That part of the report remains to-day the most 

 valuable authority on the subject of colonial fisheries. 



