2284 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



It cannot be very material to recall Lord Salisbury's attention to 

 the historical attitude of the two Governments towards the subject 

 in connection as to the fisheries by any present exposition of the 

 matter. The sources of knowledge on this subject are common to the 

 public cognisance of the two Governments. Our diplomatic inter- 

 course has unfolded the views of successive British and American 

 Cabinets upon the conflicting claims of mere right on the one side 

 si nd the other, and at the same time evinced on both sides an amicable 

 preference for practical and peaceful enjoyment of the fisheries com- 

 patibly with a common interest, rather than a sacrifice of such com- 

 mon interest to a purpose of insisting upon extreme right, at a loss 

 on both sides of what was to each the advantage sought by the con- 

 tention. In this disposition the two countries have inclined more 

 and more to retire from irreconcilable disputations as to the true 

 intent covered by the somewhat careless, and certainly incomplete, 

 text of the convention of 1818, and to look at the true elements of 

 profits and prosperity in the fisheries themselves, which alone, to the 

 one side or the other, made the shares of their respective participa- 

 tion therein worthy of dispute. This sensible and friendly view of 

 the matter in dispute was greatly assisted by the experience of the 

 provincial populations of a period of common enjoyment of the 

 fisheries without attention to any sea-line of demarcation, but with a 

 certain distribution of industrial and economical advantages in the 

 prosecution and the product of this common enjoyment. The form 

 of this experience was two-fold. First, for a period of twelve years 

 under the reciprocity arrangement of trade between the United 

 States and those provinces; and, second, for a briefer period after the 

 termination of the Reciprocity Treaty, under a system of licenses, 

 which obliterated the sea-line of circumscription to our fishery fleet 

 upon the payment of fees deemed adequate by the provincial Gov- 

 ernments. 



In this disposition and with this experience the negotiations of 



the Treaty of Washington were taken up, and produced the 



fishery articles of that comprehensive treaty. The results of 



1381 this experience and the influence of this disposition are plainly 



marked in the pertinent protocol and in the text of the articles. 



At the outset it was apparent that neither a confirmation or recti- 

 fication of the old sea-line of exclusion or the adoption of a new 

 one had any place in the counsels or purposes of Her Majesty's 

 Government, or in the interests or objects of Her Majesty's provincial 

 subjects. It had become thoroughly understood that the line of the 

 convention of 1818 had become inapplicable, and in some respects 

 insufferable to the common interests. 



The mackerel, which, always an inshore as well as a deep-sea fish, 

 otf our coasts, at the date of the convention of 1818 and for twenty 

 years after, as an object of pursuit to our fishermen, was confined 

 to the coast of the United States, and that fishery was substantially 

 unknown in any commercial sense in the provincial waters. Either a 

 change of habits in the fish or an extension of the enterprise of our 

 fishermen had opened up the mackerel fishery of the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence to our pursuit. The gradual increase of the fishing coast 

 population of the provinces had supplied the fishermen, and excited 

 the local interests for the prosecution from the shore, as the base of 

 its operations, of the new industry of inshore mackerel fishery. 



