BRITISH, COLONIAL AND OTHER CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 413 



The first paper is a letter addressed by Messrs. John Pew & Son. of 

 Gloucester, to the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, under date 1st of Decem- 

 ber. 1902. In the main this deals with the mackerel fishery conducted 

 from Gloucester, and the probable result of competition. Suffice it to 

 say in reply thereto that Newfoundland has no mackerel fishery what- 

 soever. There was a time, forty or fifty years ago, when mackerel 

 was as plentiful as caplin upon our shores, and people used them in 

 the same manner. They were so plentiful that they were carted 

 through the streets of this city to be used in the making of compost 

 for manure by farmers, as caplin and squid are used to-day. How- 

 ever, during the last thirty-five or forty years they have almost, if 

 not altogether, disappeared from our coasts, so that the statement of 

 Messrs. Pew & Son, made for the purpose of influencing the United 

 States Senate, is entirely misleading and incorrect, and has no bear- 

 ing whatever upon the Newfoundland treaty. It is quite probable 

 that no more than six or seven, if that number, of the Senators were 

 cognizant of the fact that Newfoundland possessed no mackerel 

 fishery, and the majority of the Senators were therefore deceived by 

 the paper that was put before them, from which I have quoted. 



Messrs. Pew & Sons then proceed to ask in their paper the question 

 " What does Gloucester get by such a treaty? " and to answer it thus: 

 " Only this one small thing, the withdrawal of the tonnage tax which 

 Newfoundland imposes, namely, $1.50 per net ton on American fish- 

 ing vessels that seek Newfoundland ports at certain seasons of the 

 year for the purpose of buying fresh bait. * * Under the 

 treaty of 1818, Article I, we understand that United States inhabit- 

 ants have forever the liberty to take fish of every kind on that part 

 of the southern coast of Newfoundland which extends from Cape Ray 

 to Rameau Islands; on the western and northern coasts of Newfound- 

 land, from Cape Ray to Quirpon Islands: and also on the coasts, bays, 

 harbors, and creeks from Mount Joly, on the southern coast of Lab- 

 rador, to and through the Straits of Belle Isle, and thence north- 

 wardly indefinitely. Therefore the liberty of buying bait free of ton- 

 nage tax already exists in this long stretch of seacoast, and the Hay- 

 Bond Treaty is no benefit whatever." 



This deliberate statement made to influence the Senate is fallacious 

 and misleading. 



In the first place the treaty that I had the honor of negotiating in 

 1902 means to the United States fishermen not only " the withdrawal 

 of the tonnage tax," but the important privilege of purchasing bait 

 fishes in any of the harbors of this colony, a privilege for the ten 

 years' use of which, under the Washington Treaty, the Halifax 

 Fishery Commission, which sat in 1877, awarded Newfoundland 

 $1,000,000 or an annual subvention of $100,000 per annum. The 

 treaty of 1818. to which Messrs. Pew & Son referred in their paper 

 to the Senate, conveys no such privilege. Under that treaty they have 

 no right whatever to buy bait on any part of the Newfoundland coast, 

 and they have only been permitted to do so by virtue of the foreign 

 fishing vessels act, which this bill now before the House proposes to 

 repeal. 



The treaty of 1902, now before the Senate of the United States, is 

 intended to secure to American fishermen equal privileges with our 

 own people in the winter herring fishery ; and I repeat that the state- 

 ment made by Messrs. Pew & Sons, that the Americans under the 



