480 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



of provincial fish products from duties, or the concession of our free 

 market: third, such supplemental money payment as the rature, 

 extent, and value of the British fishery concession, in the judgment 

 of the Halifax Commission, would warrant or require. It would be 

 enough to say that the present pretensions of the British Government 

 in reduction of the grant were not presented in depreciation of the 

 price we were to pay, nor was any subjection of the natural fishery 

 to political or municipal disparagement advanced by us in reduction 

 of the money value with which we were to be charged. But the 

 British and provincial Governments are precluded from the present 

 pretensions, not by silence alone as to these latent limitations and 

 incumbrances upon the grant when its price was being adjusted by 

 the Halifax Award. The " Case " of the British Government pre- 

 sents, in the most open and unequivocal terms, the measure of the 

 grant in the sense both of benefit to the United States and of injury 

 to the provincial fishermen. The conduct of the contention through- 

 out maintained the freedom of the fishery to the methods and occa- 

 sions of our fishing enterprise and skill, and insisted upon the right 

 accorded (which might exhaust and destroy the fisheries so as to 

 depreciate their benefit to the coast population even beyond the 

 Treaty period), and not its actual exercise by our fishermen as the 

 standard of estimate by which our money payment was to be fixed. 



In " the Case of Her Majesty's Government," submitted to the 

 Halifax Commission, the following language is used to illustrate and 

 enforce the advantage in the extent and method of fishing, secured 

 by the Treaty of 1871 over the restrictions of the Convention of 

 1818: 



The Convention of 1818 entitled United States citizens to fish on the shores 

 of the Magdalen Islands, but denied them the privilege of lauding there. 

 Without such permission the practical use of the inshore fisheries icas impos- 

 sible. Although such permission has tacitly existed, as a matter of sufferance, 

 it might at any moment have been withdrawn, and the operations of the United 

 States fishermen in that locality would thus have been rendered ineffectual. 

 The value of these inshore fisheries is great; mackerel, herring, halibut, cape- 

 lin, and launce abound and are caught inside of the principal bays and har- 

 bours, where they resort to spawn. Between three hundred and four hundred 

 United States fishing-vessels yearly frequent the waters of this group, and 

 take large quantities of fish, both for curing and bait. A single seine has 

 been known to take at one haul enough of herrings to fill three thousand 

 barrels. Seining mackerel is similarly productive. During the spring and 

 summer fishery of the year 1875, when the mackerel were closer inshore than 

 usual, the comparative failure of the American fishermen was owing to their 

 being unprepared ivith suitable hauling-nets and small boats, their vessels 

 being unable to approach close enough to the beaches. 



In the case of the remaining portions of the seaboard of Canada, the terms 

 of the Convention of 1S18 debarred United States citizens from landing 

 286 at any part for the pursuit of operations connected with fishing. This 

 privilege is essential to the successful prosecution of both the inshore and 

 deep-sea fisheries. By it they would be enabled to prepare their fish in a supe- 

 rior manner, in a salubrious climate, as well as more expeditiously, and they 

 would be relieved of a serious embarrassment as regards the disposition of 

 fish offals, by curing on shore the fish which otherwise would have been dressed 

 on board their vessels and the refuse thrown overboard. 



All the advantages above detailed have been secured for a period of twelve 

 years to United States fishermen. Without them, fishing operations on many 

 parts of the coast would be not only unrennmerative but impossible; and they 

 may therefore be fairly claimed as an important item in the valuation of the 

 liberties granted to the United States under Article 18 of the Treaty of Wash- 

 ington." Halifax Com., volume 1, page 93. 



