2294 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



fisheries and its resulting trade." Sir John Macdonald said in the 

 Parliament of the Dominion, " the only market for the Canadian 

 No. 1 mackerel in the world is the United States. That is our only 

 market, and we are practically excluded from it by the present duty. 

 The consequence of that duty is that our fishermen are at the mercy 

 of the American fishermen; they are made the hewers of wood ancl 

 drawers of water for the Americans. They are obliged to sell their 

 fish at the Americans' own price. The American fishermen purchase 

 their fish at a nominal value, and control the American market. The 

 great profits of the trade are handed over to the American fishermen 

 or the American merchants engaged in the trade, and they profit to 

 the loss of our own industry and our own people." 



It may be that Her Majesty's Government has surrendered these 

 opinions, and that the statesmen of the Dominion and the people of 

 the provinces now think that the possession of our market for the 

 products of the provincial fisheries is of no pecuniary advantage to 

 these provincial interests. In such case, in any future negotiation 

 respecting the fisheries, this Government would expect no stress to 

 be laid upon the question of the possession of our own markets. If 

 Her Majesty's Government accepts the award of these concurring 

 Commissioners as carrying the necessary consequence that the con- 

 cession of article 21 is of no value to British or provincial interests 

 that element of calculation will disappear from any possible exchange 

 of equivalents that the exigencies of any future friendly negotiations 

 may need to find at their service. A privilege that is valueless when 

 granted to and enjoyed by a beneficiary may well be reserved and 

 withheld, without the charge of its being ungracious to do so. 



If, on the other hand, Her Majesty's Government adheres to the 

 views of the value of our market for the product of the provincial 

 fisheries, so often and so earnestly pressed upon the attention of this 

 Government, and asserts that the award of the concurring Commis- 

 sioners must be held, upon necessary reasoning, to have measured 

 and deducted this great value of free market from the appraisement 

 of the concession of free fishing to us, made by them under article 18, 

 this Government will expect the more ready acceptance by Her 

 Majesty's Government of the proposition that these concurring Com- 

 missioners, in their award, mistook the subject submitted by article 

 18 to their pecuniary measurement, and exceeded the authority under 

 which the commission acted. 



You will, however, very earnestly press upon Lord Salisbury's 

 attention, in advance of any declaration from Her Majesty's Govern- 

 ment of their present views of the value of our markets for the prod- 

 ucts of the provincial fisheries, that this Government has not changed 

 or at all modified its opinions on this subject. To dissemble or con- ' 

 ceal from Her Majesty's Government this fact would be uncandid, 

 and, by silence on our part now, breed mischief for future conten- 

 tions or negotiations. This Government holds now, as it did by 

 the mouth of its High Commissioners in the conferences on the 

 subject of the fisheries which produced the pertinent articles of the 

 treaty, " That free fish and fish-oil would be more than an equivalent 

 for those fisheries." The measure of pecuniary value which I hnv< 

 drawn from the revenue loss to the United States, calculated with 

 extreme moderation, is an inadequate expression of the benefit to 

 the provincial interests and injury to our own from their free im- 



