APPENDICES TO ORAL ARGUMENTS. 2285 



Upon the concurrence of these circumstantial changes it was 

 natural enough for the coast population and the public men of the 

 provinces to conclude that the territorial authority which, under 

 the convention of 1818, gave the provinces the monopoly of the 

 inshore mackerel fishery, only needed to be insisted upon by a vigor- 

 ous exclusion of our fishermen to be fruitful of great local prosperity. 



These calculations were disappointed. It was soon found that the 

 provinces themselves were comparatively valueless as a market for 

 mackerel, and that the quality of the fish, as respects the methods 

 of its preparation for export, excluded it from the general foreign 

 market which was open to the products of the cod fisheries. The 

 near market of the United States was essential to the local prosperity 

 of the inshore mackerel fishermen of the provinces. The political 

 control of that market by the United States quite overreached the 

 provincial control of the inshore fishing grounds. Fish that cannot 

 find a market will not long be pursued for gain, and the fishing- 

 coast population and the statesmen of the provinces alike saw that a 

 participation in the mackerel market of the United States was the 

 indispensable condition of prosperity to their inshore fishery. Ex- 

 perience confirmed the logic of this reasoning. While the Reci- 

 procity Treaty endured, settlements throve and wealth increased. 

 When it was withdrawn, population shrunk and wealth declined ; and 

 but for the hope of its renewal a destruction of this industry seemed 

 imminent. 



Upon the other hand, the mackerel fishermen of the United States 

 felt that a participation in the inshore fisheries of the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence was no equivalent for a surrender of our mackerel market 

 to the participation of the inshore fishermen of the provinces. They 

 justly reasoned that this arrangement, in respect of the mackerel 

 catch within the line, instead of placing the provincial fishing 

 industry upon an equal footing with ours, really put us at quite a 

 disadvantage. Ordinarily, home products have a certain measure of 

 advantage over duty-free competing imports in freight, ocean or 

 inland insurance, and interest, and factorage. But here, what 

 passes for our home product is acquired upon the very shore of our 

 foreign competitor. Its pursuit is at the expense of an extended 

 voyage, with costly outfit and large investment, at great risk, with 

 long delay, measured by heavy insurance and accruing interest. 

 Bringing it to what is called the home market involves return 

 voyage and the attendant burdens of expense. The farmer fisher- 

 men of the provincial coasts leave the plough in the furrow and the 

 hay-cart in the field, and take to the simple implements and open 

 boats, with which fishing from the shore is prosecuted, when the 

 mackerel show themselves. They cure their catch as a part of their 

 home labour, and ship it at low rates to our market by bottoms which 

 make a returning commercial freight. At these odds, the share of 

 the inshore mackerel fishery of the Gulf of St. Lawrence seemed to 

 our fishermen but a poor addition to their former extensive rights 

 to be purchased by so great a disadvantage in their general fishing 

 industry, on our own coasts and in the deep sea, as well as inshore 

 fisheries of the provincial waters. 



These views, too, were confirmed by our experience during the 

 Reciprocity arrangement, and after its close. Both periods unmis- 

 takeably marked the policy of an open market for the products of 

 the provincial fisheries as disastrous to our fishing industry. 



