AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1591 



he concurs with me, yet I shall be very much surprised if I find any 

 different views from those that I have expressed taken on the other side. 

 If in argument other views should be brought forward, or if it should 

 seern to your honors, in considering the subject, that the question has 

 an importance which it has not in my view, then I can only refer you to 

 the brief that has been filed, and insist upon the principles whbh the 

 United States have heretofore maintained on that subject. For the 

 present, I congratulate you, as I do myself, that no grave and vexed 

 question of international law need trouble you in coming to a conclu- 

 sion. 



I think it is necessary to go somewhat, yet briefly, into the historical 

 aspects of the fishery question, in order to see whether that which has 

 been the subject of diplomatic controversy and of public feeling in the 

 past is really the same thing which we have under discussion to day. 

 The question has been asked, and asked with some earnestness, by my 

 friends on the other side, " If the inshore fisheries have the little impor- 

 tance which you say they have, why do your fishermen go to the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence at all?" And again it has been asked, " If the inshore 

 fisheries are of such insignificant consequence, why is it that the fisher- 

 men and people of the United States have always manifested such a 

 feverish anxiety on the subject?" Those questions deserve an answer, 

 and unless an answer can be made, you undoubtedly will feel that there 

 must be some unseen importance in this question, or there would not 

 have been all the trouble with reference to it heretofore. Why do the 

 fishermen of the United States come to the Gulf of St. Lawrence at all? 

 Why should they not come here? What men on the face of the earth 

 have a better right to plow with their keels the waters of the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence than the descendants of the fishermen of New England, 

 to whose energy and bravery, a century and a quarter ago, it is chiefly 

 owing that there is any Nova Scotia to day under the British flag? 1 

 am not going to dwell upon the history of the subject. It is well known 

 that it was New England that saved to the Crown of England these 

 maritime provinces ; that to New England fishermen is due the fact that 

 the flag of Great Britain flies on the citadel, and not the flag of France, 

 today. 



t Early in the diplomatic history of this case we find that the Treaty of 

 Paris in 1763 excluded French fishermen three leagues from the coast 

 belonging to Great Britain in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and fifteen 

 leagues from the island of Cape Breton. We find that the treaty with 

 Spain in the same year contained a reliuquishmeut of all Spanish fishing 

 rights in the neighborhood of Newfoundland. The Crown of Spain 

 expressly desisted from all pretensions to the right of fishing in the 

 neighborhood of Newfoundland. Those are the two treaties of 1763 

 the Treaty of Paris with France and the treaty with Spain. Obviously, 

 at that time, Great Britain claimed for herself exclusive sovereignty 

 over the whole Gulf of St. Lawrence and over a large part of the adja- 

 cent seas. By the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, substantially the same 

 provisions of exclusion were made with reference to the French fisher- 

 men. Now, in that broad claim of jurisdiction over the adjacent seas, 

 in the right asserted and maintained to have British subjects fish there 

 exclusively, the fishermen of New England, as British subjects, shared. 

 Undoubtedly, the pretensions that were yielded to by those treaties 

 have long since disappeared. Nobody believes now that Great Britain 

 has any exclusive jurisdiction over the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the 

 Banks of Newfoundland, but at the time when the United States 

 asserted their independence and when the treaty was formed between, 



