PLANTING AND FISHING. 103 



1853, states, " We inserted the cause of renunciation. The 

 British plenipotentiaries did not desire it." What has been 

 the result to American fisheries and the nation's welfare ? I 

 will tell you. The British construction put upon where the 

 three-mile limit should be measured from, and of the condi- 

 tions of the proviso, as means by local laws to drive Ameri- 

 can fishermen from their harbors and their coast, has been a 

 constant source of irritation and perplexity to our govern- 

 ment ever since. Numerous vessels have been seized for 

 alleged violation of the treaty. Two subsequent treaties 

 have been forced upon our country, disastrous to American 

 fisheries, and $5,500,000 has been paid, and nothing settled 

 yet. You ask, what has been gained by this lack of judg- 

 ment (to put it mild) in our statesmen of 1814 and 1818 ? 

 This is the true answer, — nothing. The increased profits on 

 exports to provincial ports, during the Reciprocity Treaty, 

 hardly compensated for the loss of duty on their imports. 

 The advantage of open ports and free fishing, given us on 

 their part, was more than balanced by their profits on trade 

 with our vessels, together with free fishing and free ports to 

 them in our waters. 



Under the Washington Treaty, the amount of duties 

 remitted on their importations of fish is four times as much 

 yearly as all the fish caught by American fishermen within 

 three miles of their shores is worth, tvhen sold in the ports of 

 the United States ; making no allowance for cost of catching 

 them, which was more than they sold for.* The American 

 fishermen have no more right to-day to enter a provincial 

 port, except under that riyid proviso of the treaty of 1818, 

 than they had before the Washijigton Treaty was made 



* The average yearly fleet of American vessels fishing in British waters 

 since the "Washington Treaty took effect, including 1879, has been 136. Their 

 total catch of mackerel, outside and inside the treaty limits, averaged 32,633 

 barrels yearly, the average total value of which, when landed in the United 

 States, was $250,849; value of vessels and outfits, $716,000. Total value of ves- 

 sels, outfits, and catch, .S96G,849; show'ng that the yearly average amount of 

 the fishery award, with the remitted duties on Canadian fish added (upwards 

 of $350,000), which our government is paying annually for the j)rivilefje of try- 

 ing to catch fish sioimming in the sea within three miles of the shore, is equal to, 

 or more than, yearly, the value of all the American vessels, with all their out- 

 fits and catch, that fished in British waters anywhere. 



Does any one wonder that such treaties excite indignation when mad© 

 directly against the protests of American fishermen, and ostensibly for their 

 interest when it is their destruction ? 



