DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 665 



vessel-owner, and outfitter to that portion of the crew who receive 

 the smallest share of the venture, it must be considered as conclu- 

 sively established that there would be no material value whatever in 

 the grant by the British Government to American fishermen of abso- 

 lutely free fishing; and in this conclusion it will be seen, by a refer- 

 ence to the testimony, that all these interests fully concur. 



It will also be noticed, on reference to the evidence, that it appears 

 to show that when, by force of the treaty of 1871 Canadian 

 397 fish, both salt and fresh, were admitted to the markets of the 

 United States free of duty, no fall of prices to the consumer 

 took place, and that the abrogation of the duty simply redounded to 

 the advantage of the foreign fishermen or the foreign dealers in fish 

 exporting the same to the United States; and that when, on the 1st 

 July, 1885, the duty on salt fish was revived, no part of this duty was 

 borne by the consumers in the United States, and that the cost of fish 

 in the United States was not at all affected. It would follow that the 

 sums received into the Treasury from these fish duties were paid and 

 borne by the Canadians alone. A parallel instance is also found, on 

 reference to the testimony, in the statements of gentlemen engaged 

 in exporting salt fish from the United States to other countries where 

 duties are imposed, these gentlemen stating that the duty thus im- 

 posed upon fish came out of their pockets, and not out of the pockets 

 of the foreign consumers. 



As regards commercial and other friendly business intercourse 

 between ports arid places in the Dominion and the United States, it is 

 of course, of much importance that regulations affecting the same 

 should be mutually resonable and fairly administered. If an 

 American vessel should happen to have caught a cargo of fish at 

 sea 100 miles distant from some Canadian port, from which there 

 is railway communication to the United States, and should be denied 

 the privilege of landing and shipping its cargo therefrom to the 

 United States, as the Canadians do, it would be, of course, a serious 

 disadvantage, and there is, it is thought, nothing in the treaty of 

 1818 which would warrant such an exclusion. But the Dominion 

 laws may make such a distinction, and it is understood that, in fact, 

 the privilege of so shipping fish from American vessels has been 

 refused during the last year. 



It is also inconvenient and injurious that American vessels of any 

 character, whether engaged in fishing or licensed to touch and trade 

 or purely mercantile vessels should be unable in cases of occasional 

 necessity to resort to Canadian ports for the purpose of buying sup- 

 plies or any commodities that the ordinary laws of the Dominion 

 allow to be exported at all. Several instances of such injurious and 

 unfriendly action appear to have taken place. 



The treaties between the United States and Great Britain on the 

 subject of inter-communication, and the rights of the citizens and 

 subjects of the one in the ports and territories of the other have not 

 included the British dominions of North America (with possibly 

 certain exceptions as to intercourse by land), and such intercourse, 

 strangely enough, still remains the subject of legislation merely in 

 the two countries. Such legislation to be tolerable must be mutually 

 friendly and reciprocal, and laws upon the subject must be adminis- 

 tered fairly and generously, and not in a spirit of carping at small 

 matters or in any other wise in an unfriendly way. The committee 



