1568 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



stands If von will demonstrate and prove that when we go into the 

 Golf of St Lawrence to fish, the privilege is worth a great deal more to 

 us to be allowed to follow a school of mackerel inshore and catch them 

 than is the privilege accorded to you to come into our inshore fisheries ; 

 if after comparing our fisheries with yours, this tribunal entertains the 

 honest opinion that an amount should be paid by the United States, the 

 award will be paid, and no more words said about it. What is the use 

 of iriii>orting into this subject difficulties and contentions of words 

 which do not mean anything after all. The question is, whether the 

 Canadian inshore fisheries are worth more to us than our inshore fish- 

 erics are to the Canadians, with the free import of fresh fish, and if, 

 after the examination of witnesses, this tribunal holds that our inshore 

 fisheries are worth a great deal more than the inshore fisheries of the 

 Dominion, then we will not pay anything. But the question submitted 

 to this tribunal is not one that requires a great deal of discussion about 

 treaties or a very close examination of words. If we are to go into that 

 examination, one of the first things to determine is, what sort of a treaty 

 are we dealing with ? Because if it is a commercial treaty, an exchange 

 of commercial rights, it is one of the principles of diplomatic interpreta- 

 tion that cannot be contradicted, that runs through every modern recip- 

 rocity treaty, that commercial equivalents are absolute equivalents, and 

 do not admit of money valuation by an additional money compensation. 

 For instance, suppose England should make a treaty with France, and 

 England should say: "We will admit your wines free of duty if you will 

 admit certain classesof manufactures free of duty." The treaty then goes 

 into operation. Suppose for some reason or other there were no French 

 light wines drunk in England for ten years, and the French took a 

 large quantity of English manufactured goods, at the end of ten years 

 it might turn out that England had made several millions of dollars by 

 that treaty, while France had made nothing. But you cannot make any 

 calculation as to compensation ; the whole point is that it is recip- 

 rocity the right exchange. Just so is it in regard to the question 

 of fisheries and their values. Suppose from the right to import fish into 

 the United States the Canadians make $500,000 a year, and from our 

 right to import fish into the Dominion we do not make 8500, what has 

 that to do with this question ? The reciprocity, the right of exchange, 

 JM the principle. And this is why it is that all reciprocity treaties are 

 tei|Mrary treaties ; because the object of such treaties is regarding the 

 general principle of free trade as beneficial to all people, to open the 



ills of the industries of nations to each other. 



The men who made the treaty may have miscalculated the industries 

 iffected by it. It may occur that on account of a want of adaptation ou 

 part of the people or ignorance of the markets, the Reciprocity 

 real v does not turn out advantageous, and therefore such a treaty is 

 nly made for a short term of years. But if it is a reciprocity treaty 

 ing extended commercial facilities, you have to put every one as an 

 Hleiit against another. If you put the Washington Treaty on that 

 then our right to use your inshore fisheries is balanced by your 

 use our inshore fisheries, and the advantages are equal. That 

 way in which you can deal with the question if you view the 

 i- as one of reciprocity. But if you consider the treaty as an ex- 

 Chang 



the question of the difference in value, 



d could meet and ascertain the market value of the laud and 



