3 



8 T/ie Fishery QzLestion. 



erievance inhabited the shores where the 

 liberty was to be exercised. 



England, now in direct competition with 

 the products of the American Fishery, was not 

 without the power to obstruct the American 

 trade. In July of the same year that the 

 treaty was signed, an order in council prohib- 

 ited the importation of American fish to the 

 markets of the English West Indies, Con- 

 gress wished to meet the emergency and 

 asked of the States permission to retaliate. 

 This was not given. In the constitutional 

 convention Pickering said that the New 

 England States had lost everything by the 

 war. In the first Congress, Fisher Ames 

 declared that West Indian molasses had been 

 counted upon in exchange for the fish that 

 could not be disposed of elsewhere. He con- 

 cluded that if the West Indian demand for 

 fish were injured, "we cannot maintain the 

 fisheries." Extraordinary measures were pres- 

 ently adopted to sustain the failing industry. ^° 

 By an act of 1 789 a bounty was granted on 

 the various kinds of marketable fish. It was 

 considered insufficient. By another act, in 

 1792, the bounties were abolished, and a spe- 

 cific allowance was established, accordino- to 



