CONGRESS. (NON-lNTERCOTTBSE.) 



179 



In explanation of the measure, Senator Ed- 

 munds, of Vermont, said : " This bill provides 

 that if our vessels are mistreated in Canadian 

 ports pure fishing-vessels, I will stick to that 

 now, for the time being and are denied .or 

 embarrassed in the fair exercise of the rights 

 that they have, the President of the United 

 States may, as a countervailing operation, say 

 that the Canadian fish, and the Canadian fish- 

 erman, and the Canadian trader, and the Ca- 

 nadian everybody else, shall not come into the 

 waters of the United States at all. Suppose 

 he says that; that is not war. Suppose it 

 continues for ten years; it is a. question of 

 who can stand it best. I think the people 

 of the United States can stand it best, and it 

 will be a persuasion to those people to mitigate 

 accordingly somewhat of the rough asperity of 

 their manners and somewhat of the irregularity 

 of their conduct. Suppose it does not. Then 

 you have simply got non-intercourse between 

 the British provinces and the United States. 

 The question is, short of war, who can stand 

 that the longest. I think there can be but 

 one answer to that proposition. 



"So the question whether we have got to 

 fight to protect American fishermen in their 

 rights that thej r are entitled to under the treaty 

 alone, as I said before, is not a question at this 

 present moment or this present year of any 

 war, but it is a question of countervailing reg- 

 ulations which all nations have resorted to 

 long before, and usually never coining to a war 

 afterward, in respect of adjusting these rights. 



" The very matter of these fisheries has been 

 for a hundred years carried on in the same 

 way. Her Majesty's Government have, from 

 time to time, made their regulations or author- 

 ized them to be made, and they have been 

 made and they have executed them, and the 

 Congress of the United States has authorized 

 the President, under our laws, to adjust his 

 conduct accordingly as to whether they could 

 come here or whether they could not. So it is 

 no new thing ; and it is not war. There may 

 be war if, by-and-by, it is found that it is im- 

 possible for these countries to adjust this 

 matter under clear and definite rights as they 

 now exist, and one party or the other may go 

 to war. The British Government may say, 

 "If you do not choose to admit Dominion 

 vessels into the United States which you are 

 under no treaty obligation to do, we will go to 

 war with you," as we might with China, be- 

 cause she will not admit American vessels into 

 every one of her ports and places; but that is 

 a very ultimate and a very far-off question." 



Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, took a less pacific 

 view of the controversy. He said: "It may 

 be that the British Government, by these un- 

 warranted seizures and atrocities, outrages and 

 wrongs, admitted to be in violation of that 

 treaty, have had no ulterior purpose except to 

 compel us to accept their construction of that 

 treaty, to subject us to duress and coercion to 

 force the United States to admit their interpre- 



tations of the marine league, of the rights of the 

 fishermen, of the rights of shelter, water, food, 

 and fuel were such as they proposed to put 

 upon them. But I do not read these trans- 

 actions in that way; the American people do 

 not read them in that way. There was some 

 design and purpose other than to obtain a 

 peaceful solution of the question of the con- 

 struction or interpretation of doubtful pro- 

 visions of the Treaty of 1818. 



" Sir, England has always been the ruffian, 

 the coward, and the bully among the nations 

 of the earth ; insolent to the weak, arrogant 

 to the feeble, cringing and obsequious to the 

 strong, her history for centuries has been a 

 record of crimes against the human race. In 

 Ireland, in Scotland and Wales, against the 

 Roman Catholics, against the Boers of South 

 Africa, against the Hindoos and the Chinese, 

 against the Afghans, the Persians, and the Egyp- 

 tians, wherever there has been a feeble and 

 helpless people, Great Britain has appeared for 

 the purpose of rapacity, plunder, and conquest. 



" England bears no good-will to this country. 

 The memory of defeat in two wars rankles, I 

 have no doubt, in the breasts of Englishmen. 

 When I say that Great Britain is not friendly 

 to America, I mean that the ruling classes are 

 not, and that they have never been. 



" Their course toward us has uniformly been 

 one of supercilious insolence and of outrage. 

 They cheated the South with false hopes of 

 recognition, and they outraged the North by 

 violating the rights of neutrality. Their action 

 in the Treaty of "Washington was controlled 

 solely by a fear of the consequences to their 

 own commerce in the next war in which they 

 might be engaged if they permitted the pre- 

 cedent that they had established to stand un- 

 denied. 



" I believe that there is no special reciprocity 

 and good-will on the part of America toward 

 England. There are few Americans who do 

 not regret Waterloo. There are few Ameri- 

 cans who do not recognize the fact that the 

 conduct of Great Britain toward this country 

 has been characterized by jealousy and ma- 

 levolence from the beginning of our national 

 existence, and that she is our only enemy 

 among the powers of the earth. 



" If I read these transactions aright, there is 

 no desire on the par* of Great Britain to secure 

 a peaceful solution, a pacific interpretation of 

 the doubtful provisions of the Treaty of 1818, 

 but a deliberate design to so far foment the 

 irritation, the discontent that exists between 

 the United States of America and the Dominion 

 of Canada, as to prevent the pacific political 

 affiliations of those two powers in the immedi- 

 ate future, which would be inevitable if it 

 were left to the operation of the natural laws 

 of politics, of trade, and of society. 



" I think I discern very plainly what the pur- 

 pose of Great Britain has been in this matter. 

 She means to render it impossible for free, 

 friendly, reciprocal relations, political and 



