DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 313 



And now as to the mackerel fishery. There are two singular facts connected 

 with it. The first is, that valuable as it is represented to be, lying, as it is 

 claimed to do, within an almost closed sea, the mackerel fishery of the gulf 

 has been until within a few years the industry of strangers. It has not 

 attracted native capital, it has not stimulated native enterprise, it has not 

 developed native ports and harbors, while you claim and complain that it has 

 built up Gloucester into established wealth and prosperity, and supplies, to a 

 large degree, a great food market of the United States. I find the following 

 remarks in a report of Commander Cochran to Vice-Admiral Seymour in 1851 : 



" The curious circumstance that about one thousand sail of American 

 schooners find it very remunerative to pursue the herring and mackerel fisheries 

 on the shores of our northern provinces, while the inhabitants scarcely 

 188 take any, does indeed appear strange, and apparently is to be accounted 

 for by the fact that the colonists are wanting in capital and energy. 

 The Jersey merchants, who may be said to possess the whole labour market, 

 do not turn their attention to these branches. The business of the Jersey houses 

 is generally, I believe, with one exception, carried on by agents; these persons 

 receive instructions from their employers to devote their whole time and energy 

 to the catching and curing of cod. Such constant attention to one subject appears 

 at least to engender a perfect apathy respecting other branches of their trade. 

 They are all aware, I believe fully aware, of the advantages to be derived from 

 catching the herring and mackerel, when these come in shoals within a few 

 yards of tueir doors, but still nothing is done. 



" Commercial relations of long standing, never having engaged in the trade 

 before, possible want of the knowledge of the markets, and the alleged want of 

 skill among the fishermen of the method of catching and curing of these fish, 

 together with the twenty per cent, duty on English fish in America, may tend to 

 induce the Jersey houses not to enter into these branches. Added to all these 

 reasons the capital of the principals is, I am informed, in most instances small. 

 It will probably be diflicult to find about the Bay of Chaleurs'and GaspS any 

 fishermen not engaged by some one of the numerous Jersey houses, and it may 

 be said that a new branch of industry would much interfere with the cod-fishery, 

 but so lucrative a trade as the herring and mackerel one would prove would 

 enable higher wages to be given than are done for cod. In fact, I believe that 

 very small, if any, wages are given at all, the money due to the fisherman for 

 his summer labor being absorbed in food and clothing for himself and family, 

 repairs of boats and fishing-gear, almost always deeply in debt in the spring, 

 or at any rate sufficiently so to insure his labor for the ensuing summer, and 

 so more persons would be induced to resort here the summer season. (Confi- 

 dential Official Correspondence, pp. 4 and 5.)" 



This is precisely the testimony of the Gaspe witnesses who were 

 put upon the stand. The great Jersey houses, which do represent 

 the capital, enterprise, experience, and skill of the country, do not 

 touch the mackerel fisheries. As they did a quarter of a century ago, 

 so they do to-day ; they abandon, neglect utterly what has been called 

 the California of the coast, and make and maintain their fortunes by 

 giving up mackerel-fishing and confining their attention exclusively to 



cod-fishing. 



******* 



[The argument of Mr. Richard H. Dana, on behalf of the United 

 States, contained the following] : 



******* 



Your honors will also observe that until 1830 the mackerel fisheries were 

 unknown. There was no fishery but the cod fishery. The cod fisheries were all 

 the parties had in mind in making the Treaty of 1818, and to this day, as you 

 have observed from some of the witnesses, "Fishing," by the common speech 

 of Gloucester, fishing means, ex vi termini cod-fishing is one thing and " mack- 

 ereling " is another. In Mr. Adams's pamphlet, on the 23rd page, he speaks of 

 it as a " fishery," or in other words, cod fishery, and in 1818 the question was 

 of the right of England to exclude. 



****** 



Great changes took place in that time. The mackerel fishery rose into im- 

 portance. Your honors have bad before you the interesting spectacle of an old 



