APPENDICES TO ORAL ARGUMENTS. 2283 



and protests against any implication from, the magnitude of the 

 award of the Halifax Commission, or otherwise from its proceedings 

 under the Treaty of Washington, that the United States have sanc- 

 tioned or acquiesced in, or by payment of that award would sanction 

 or acquiesce in, any lesser measure of the privileges secured to the 

 United States under the convention of 1818 than, as is well known to 

 Her Majesty's Government, they have always insisted upon. 



In the next place, the United States did not submit to the Halifax 

 Commission, under the fishery articles of the Treaty of Washington, 

 any valuation of any general economic or political advantages which 

 grow out of access to fishing grounds for the development of a mer- 

 cantile or naval marine, and which therefore, it might be argued, 

 would be enhanced by adding the area of the inshore fisheries of 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the fields for that enterprise, from the 

 earliest period open to and occupied by the bold and hardy seamen 

 of this country. Still less did the United States submit to that com- 

 mission a pecuniary measurement of the removal of occasions of strife 

 between the fishermen, or misunderstanding between the Govern- 

 ments of the two countries, by the temporary obliteration of a restric- 

 tive line dividing the inshore from the deep-sea fisheries on portions 

 of the coast of British North America. 



Both of these subjects are considerations, governmental in their 

 nature, suitable to be entertained, with many others, in the diplo- 

 matic negotiations which ended in the treaty. They are neither of 

 them computable in money. That which relates to the maintenance 

 of good understanding and good neighbourhood between the United 

 States and the British North American provinces can, least of all 

 things, be admitted as an estimable element in a pecuniary computa- 

 tion. The importance of such maintenance of good understanding 

 and good neighbourhood the United States will never under-value. 

 In this interest large fiscal concessions were made by the United 

 States in the adjustments of the Treaty of Washington. After such 

 concessions the superadded submission to the Halifax Commission 

 of the question of equalising, by a pecuniary measure, those conces- 

 sions with supposed equivalent concessions by Her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment was entertained and agreed to by the United States, mainly, 

 if not entirely, in the disposition to meet any just interest of the 

 British North American provinces to be assured of the equality of 

 these intended equivalents. But the maintenance of these good rela- 

 tions is of common interest to the two countries, and can never be 

 made the occasion of pecuniary tribute, as if of more importance to 

 one than to the other. No such calculation entered into the enlight- 

 ened and conciliatory motives which animated and shaped the im- 

 portant series of negotiations which produced the Treaty of Wash- 

 ington. In the definition of whatever unadjusted computation was 

 referred for pecuniary settlement to the Halifax Commission care 

 was taken to include nothing which, suitably to the honour of both 

 countries, was not measurable by a scale of industrial and commer- 

 cial profits. 



If these plain considerations shall be viewed in this light by Her 

 Majesty's Government, it is hoped that a concurrence of opinion as 

 to the nature of the question actually submitted to a pecuniary 

 measure by the Halifax Commission may be easily reached. 



