AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1575 



us the right to do so, how came we to be buying bait ? Why, we have 

 always done it. From the time there was a man there with bait to sell, 

 there was an American to buy it from him. We have never asked for 

 the right to buy bait. You cannot find a diplomatic letter anywhere in 

 which we have complained that we were prohibited from buying bait. 

 After the Treaty of 1854 had expired, it is true, the Canadians, who felt 

 sore about the matter, undertook to say we should not buy any bait ; 

 that if we did, we would be punished therefor. They were immediately 

 stopped by Great Britain, who, without saying in terms that the Amer- 

 icans had a right to buy bait by the Treaty of 1817 or irrespective of all 

 treaties, declared it to be against the policy of the nation to prohibit 

 it 5 and they stopped this petty persecution of American fishermen. I 

 care not what line of reasoning induced the British Government to take 

 that course with their Canadian subjects. I do not care whether they 

 considered that the Treaty of 1818 gave it to us (I do not see how they 

 could), or whether, as is more probable, they, being large-minded men, 

 who had studied the subject, considered it something which, not being 

 prohibited, belonged to us, and they did not intend to prohibit it. 



Now, who are the men who buy the fish for bait ? They are not the 

 men who fish within the three-mile limitation. We do not buy bait 

 here to catch mackerel. The bait we buy is for the Banks and deep-sea 

 <jod fishery. There is no pretense from any evidence that our mackerel 

 fishermen come here to buy bait ; it is only the Bank cod-fishermen who 

 do so. I respectfully submit to this learned tribunal that it can have 

 nothing to do with how the fishermen on the Banks see fit to employ 

 themselves. The Treaties of 1818, 1854, and 1871 related solely to fishing 

 within the three miles. The Treaty of 1783 recognizes the right of Ameri- 

 can fishermen to fish on the Banks, on the high seas, a right which had 

 always belonged to American fishermen, never ceded to them by any 

 treaty, but which they hold by the right of common humanity. These 

 men come into Canadian ports to buy bait. What has this tribunal to 

 do with them f 



Have not American fishermen fishing on the high seas the right to run 

 into British ports by comity, by the universal law of nations, if they are 

 not specially excluded on some ground which the United States admits 

 to be proper and right ? Have they not the right to come in and buy 

 bait and other necessaries ? Great Britain possesses the power to put 

 any regulation on them it pleases, to require them to enter at the cus- 

 tom-house, to be searched to see whether they are merchants in disguise, 

 and to levy duties upon them ; but in the absence of a prohibition, there 

 is no right to prevent those fishermen buying bait or supplies. 



I next come to the question of shelter, repairs, purchasing ice and 

 other articles, and transshipping cargoes. I do not propose to admit 

 that we have not these rights, or that we are exercising them simply 

 because we are not punished for doing so, or that because the Treaties of 

 1818 or 1871 have not given them to us, we do not possess them, and 

 that it is within the power of the provinces to exclude us from them 

 altogether. That depends upon considerations which are not necessary 

 for us to take in view. If your honors should decide that -you have no 

 right to recognize, among the elements of compensation, those rights of 

 which I speak ; then if the colonies should pass a law which should pun- 

 ish every American fisherman from the Grand Banks or inshore fisher- 

 ies who should buy bait or ice or refit is guilty of an offense, it would 

 then be a question for Her Majesty's governor-general to determine 

 whether that was not an imperial question, and, if so, to refer it to Her 

 Majesty in council to determine. I have no fear that any such statute 



