2292 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



Under article 18 we are furnished a true criterion by the experience 

 of a tenant, confessedly willing and able to improve me fishery to the 

 utmost, and actually doing so. 



I now desire you to present to Lord Salisbury's attention the sub- 

 ject of the concession of a free market in the United States for the 

 products of the provincial fisheries as made by article 21. 

 1385 The value of this privilege to the provinces was required by 

 the treaty to be measured oy the Halifax Commission, and de- 

 ducted from their appraisement of the concession of article 18 in 

 favour of the United States. 



The statistics of the importation under this privilege showed that 

 at the rate of duty prevalent before that concession, a revenue of 

 about 200,000 dollars per annum on mackerel alone, and of more than 

 300,000 dollars on all kinds of fish (mackerel included) and fish-oil 

 would have accrued to the United States. For the purpose of argu- 

 ment, conceding that but one-half of this annual sum of 300.000 

 dollars should be set down as pecuniary profit to the provincial inter- 

 ests, the sum of 1,800,000 dollars would need to be deducted, on the 

 score of article 21, from the true valuation of the privilege conceded 

 by article 18. If I have assigned correctly the highest possible 

 measure of the privilege of article 18, upon the evidence, as not be- 

 ing more than 1,500,000 dollars, this low valuation of the privilege 

 of article 21 more than extinguishes it. 



Whatever disposition the concurring Commissioners made of this 

 countervailing concession of article 21 whether they gave it a value 

 commensurate with the statistical evidence of the revenue loss to the 

 United States, and market gain to the provincial interest, or con- 

 sidered it absolutely valueless the matter is one of much moment. 



If these concurring Commissioners gave the sum of 5,500,000 as 

 the appraisement of the concession of article 18, after deducting some 

 2,000,000 dollars for the countervailing concession of article 21, the 

 argument, as it seems to this Government, adequate before, becomes 

 still more conclusive that the measurement thus enhanced to some 

 7,500,000 dollars, was not applied and confined to the very subject 

 submitted to the appraisement of the commission by article 18. 



But, it may be said, these concurring Commissioners may have 

 treated the concession of article 21 as absolutely valueless to the 

 provincial interests, and it was competent for them to do so. But 

 this alternative is little consistent with the whole tenour of the views 

 of Her Majesty's Government, as maintained by successive Cabinets, 

 and insisted upon in responsible negotiations, by their most eminent 

 representatives through a long course of years. Certainly, ever since 

 1851, when Lord Elgin, as Governor-General of Canada, communi- 

 cated through the British Minister at Washington, Sir Henry Bul- 

 wer, to Mr. Webster, Secretary of State, the opinion of the British 

 Government that the admission of the product of the provincial fish- 

 eries duty free to our market was the one indispensable condition to 

 our participation in the inshore fisheries of the provinces, down to 

 the negotiation of the Treaty of Washington, the attitude of the 

 British Government on this point has been explicit and unequivocal. 



Lord Elgin declared : " Her Majesty's Government are prepared, 

 on certain conditions and with certain reservations, to make the con- 

 cession to which so much importance seems to have been attached by 

 Mr. Clayton, viz., to throw open to the fishermen of the United States 



