APPENDICES TO ORAL ARGUMENTS. 2291 



concurring Commissioners, were not identical nor even similar, and 

 that such award, upon this reason, transcends the submission. 



The demonstration at which I have aimed appears so conclusive 

 upon the mere consideration of the concession of article 18, as to super- 

 sede, so far as the immediate argument goes, an exhibition of the re- 

 duction even of the moderate sum above assigned, as the true appraisal 

 of the concession of that article, by the pecuniary value, as laid before 

 the commission, of the counter-concessions of articles 19 and 21. But 

 a brief statement of the views of this Government on the treatment 

 of these counter-concessions in the deliberations of the Halifax Com- 

 mission, is requisite both to the completeness and the frankness of this 

 exposition. 



In brief, it may be said that Her Majesty's Government formally 

 insisted in their " Case " and in their " Reply " laid before the com- 

 mission, that the concession of article 19, whereby British subjects are 

 admitted to the freedom of our coast fisheries north of the 39th par- 

 allel, is, to quote the language of the " Case," " absolutely valueless ; " 

 and that the concession of article 21, admitting fish and fish-oil, the 

 product of the provincial fisheries, to our markets duty-free, to quote 

 the language of the " Reply," " has not resulted in pecuniary profit 

 to the British fishermen, but, on the contrary, to the American dealer 

 or consumer." 



If I have been at all successful in showing the enormous dispro- 

 portion between the sum of 5,500,000 dollars announced as their award 

 by the concurring Commissioners, and the pecuniary value which the 

 evidence assigns to the concessions of article 18 by itself considered, 

 I need spend little time in showing that these Commissioners must 

 have accepted the views of Her Majesty's Government that nothing 

 was to be allowed for countervailing value to the concessions of 

 articles 19 and 21, or, that these Commissioners had in their minds a 

 measure for the concession of article 18 still more inconsistent with the 

 true treaty definition of the subject described in that article and sub- 

 mitted to the appraisement of the commission. 



If the concession of article 19 was held by the Commissioners to be 

 " absolutely worthless," as asserted in the " Case " of Her Majesty's 

 Government, it must have been because the pecuniary profit to the pro- 

 vincial fishermen of the privilege as actually enjoyed by them was the 

 true measure of estimation of the value of the concession. In this 

 view the immense value of these fisheries, as shown in the evidence, all 

 went for nothing, because the population, capital or enterprise in the 

 provinces, could not carry on, what to them were remote fisheries in 

 competition with our own coast population. Without insisting upon 

 the unreasonableness of measuring the value of our fishing grounds 

 by the incompetency of provincial resources to engage in the fishery 

 opened to them, this disposition of the value of the concession of 

 article 19 recognises the whole force and result of the reasoning by 

 which I have assigned the true criteria of value for the privilege of 

 article 18, under the experience of the actual five years' enjoyment 

 thereof by our fishermen, who were able to take advantage of the 

 privilege and did so, to the furthest extent compatible with profit. 

 The view of the reasoning by which a right of fishery, valuable in its 

 own capacity, is measured by the tenants' incapacity to fish, is ob- 

 vious. It furnishes no true criterion of the rent value of a fishery, 

 which is what needed to be got at both under article 18 and article 19. 



