1252 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



Conduct of that sort has, I think, some effect. But, take Lord Aber- 

 deen, or the other British statesmen who have made concessions from 

 time to time; those concessions are not indicative of an opinion in 

 agreement with the United States because they were accompanied 

 with the statement that they were not intended as anything but con- 

 cessions. In 1871, when a concession was made, Mr. Fish accepted it, 

 and acknowledged that it was indicative of a generous spirit of 

 amity ; yet, notwithstanding that, it was thus accepted by the United 

 States, we have laxity of enforcement urged now as a reason why the 

 opinion of the United States should prevail and the opinion of 

 Great Britain should be overthrown. We have a plea based upon 

 conduct which was accepted and, I think I am not wrong in saying, 

 thankfully accepted, as getting rid of a difficulty and as a concession 

 by Great Britain in a generous spirit of amity. 



In Canada, Sirs, we understand perfectly the position of Great 

 Britain in the world. We are a part of the British Empire. We 

 have to take the bad with the good. Sometimes one part of the 

 Empire suffers for the sake of the rest of the Empire. Locally there 

 may be some irritation because of that, but the better men among us 

 take the larger view, and say that the interest of the Empire as a 

 whole must be regarded. The United States has its own difficulties 

 in its smaller compass all between the Atlantic and the Pacific. 

 The Japanese peril seems to loom large on the Pacific coast, and 

 appears to be something very terrible to the people in California, but 

 on the Atlantic coast, in New York and in Boston, it seems to lose 

 all appearance of anything but a little disagreeable incident which 

 is to be got rid of as easily as possible. We cannot help, in a wide- 

 spread Empire, these difficulties arising, and if British statesmen, 

 either from in appreciation of the value to a locality of its industry 

 and that is but human nature or from the desire to keep upon good 

 terms with the United States, have been lax in their enforcement of 

 the strict rights of Great Britain that, Sirs, I submit most respect- 

 fully, is no reason why the British view should be held to be an 

 untrue view by an international Tribunal, which rises above all such 

 considerations and which decides merely according to the law itself. 



The concession to which I have particularly referred, and which 

 was made during the time of Mr. Fish, happened during a period 

 of great tension between Great Britain and the United States. The 

 Civil War in the United States had raged for several years, and had 

 evoked sympathy on one side or the other throughout the 

 755 world. British and Canadian sympathy was divided, but per- 

 haps to a preponderating extent it was upon the side of the 

 Southern States. That is disputed; I give merely my own idea. 

 The United States resented the feeling very fiercely. They were 

 engaged in a death struggle for the unity of the United States. 



