2290 NOETH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



ing. which must be deducted before the profit, which measures the 

 value of the fishery privilege, is reached. Upon the evidence 1 dollar 

 a barrel would be an excessive estimate of net profit, and this would 

 give a profit to our fishermen from the enjoyment for these five sea- 

 sons of the fishery privilege, conceded under article 18, of but 25,000 

 dollars a-vear, or, for the whole treaty period of twelve years, of 

 300,000 dollars. 



Although there would seem to be no reason for distrusting this 

 commercial and pecuniary measure of the privilege in question, yet, 

 if it should be pretended that the provincial value should not be taken, 

 but the value in the market of the United States; and, further, that 

 an extravagant rate of 10 dollars per barrel should be assumed 

 1384 as that value ; and, again, beyond all bounds of even capricious 

 estimate, a conjectural profit of 50 per cent, should be assigned 

 to the fishing adventures, we should have but 125.000 dollars a-year, 

 or 1,500.000 dollars for the twelve years of the treaty, for the gross 

 valuation of the concession of the United States by article 18, undi- 

 minished by a penny, for the counter-concessions of the United States 

 of articles 19 and 21. Yet this sum, thus reached, is but little more 

 than one-quarter of the award of the concurring Commissioners, after 

 taking into account the deductions required for the privileges of 

 articles 19 and 21. 



The proofs disclose another wholly independent criterion of the 

 value of the privilege conceded to our fishermen by article 18 of the 

 treaty, drawn from the experience of some years intervening between 

 the abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty and the negotiation of the 

 Treaty of Washington. The provincial government in these years 

 adopted a licence system, by which vessels of the United States were 

 admitted to the inshore fishery upon the payment of fees for the sea- 

 son, rated by the ton. The experience of this system showed that 

 imder an exaction of 50 cents per ton, our fishing fleet took out 

 licences ; that when the fee was raised to 1 dollar per ton, the number 

 of licences fell off about one-half, and when a fee of 2 dollars per ton 

 was exacted, but few licences were taken out. The fairness of this 

 measure of the value of the privilege is obvious. It furnishes a com- 

 pensatory rate between opposing interests, suggested and acted upon 

 by them without coercion, and by concurring consent. 



The tonnage taking out licences under the first and lowest rate was 

 about 32,000 tons. Assuming, contrary to experience, that this ton- 

 nage would have borne the highest rate of 2 dollars per ton, the sum 

 of 64,000 dollars per annum would have measured the value of the 

 privilege in question, and would have yielded for the treaty period 

 of twelve years 768,000 dollars. By this method of valuation of the 

 privilege of article 18 (without deducting a penny for the counter- 

 privileges of articles 19 and 21) would be but about 14 per cent, of 

 the award of the concurring Commissioners, after they had taken into 

 account these privileges. 



You will say then, to Lord Salisbury, that with every anxiety to 

 find some rational explanation of the enormous disparity between the 

 pecuniary computations of the evidence and the pecuniary measure 

 announced by the concurring Commissioners, this Government has 

 been unable to do so upon any other hypothesis than that the very 

 matter defined in article 18, and to which the proofs on both sides 

 were applied, and the very matter measured by the award of the 



