AWABD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1603 



reason for awarding a sum of money. If there is a belief on the other 

 side that the results of the treaty are injurious to a great industry, 

 which nearly all civilized nations have thought it worth while to foster 

 by bounties, that is no argument against rendering compensation. 

 Whatever benefit the citizens of the United States are proved to derive 

 from the inshore mackerel fisheries, within three miles of the shore of 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence, for that you are to make an award, having 

 regard to the offset, of which it will be my duty to speak at a later 

 period. The inquiry divides itself into these two heads : First, What 

 has been the value from July 1, 1873, down to the present time ! and, 

 second, What is it going to be hereafter ? I invite your attention to 

 the proof that is before you as to the value of the mackerel fishery since 

 the treaty went into effect. And here I must deal with the question, 

 What proportion of the mackerel is caught in territorial waters, viz, 

 within three miles from the shore? A great mass of testimony has 

 been adduced on both sides, and it might seem to be in irreconcilable 

 conflict. But let us not be dismayed at this appearance. There are 

 certain land-marks which cannot be changed, by a careful attention to 

 which I think we may expect to arrive at a tolerably certain conclusion. 

 In the first place, it has been proved, has it not, by a great body of 

 evidence, that there is, and always has been, in the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence, a very extensive mackerel fishery clearly beyond British juris- 

 diction, as to which no new rights are derived by the citizens of the 

 United States from the Treaty of Washington. It is true that the map 

 filed in the British Case, and the original statement of that case, make 

 no distinction between the inshore and the deep-sea mackerel fisheries. 

 To look at this map, and to read the British Case, you would think that 

 the old claims of exclusive jurisdiction throughout the gulf were still 



> kept up, and that all the mackerel caught in the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 I were, as one of the witnesses expressed himself, " British subjects." 

 i But we know perfectly well that a United States vessel, passing through 



the Gut of Canso to catch mackerel in the gulf, will find numerous 

 places where, for many years, the fishing has been the best, where the 

 fish are the largest, and where the catches are the greatest, wholly 

 i away from the shore. The map attached to the British Case tells this 

 story, for all through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the gentlemen who 

 formed that map have put down the places where mackerel are caught; 

 and if the map itself does not indicate that seven-eighths of the mackerel 

 fishing- grounds must be clearly far away from the shore, I arn very 

 much mistaken. At the Magdalen Islands, where we have always had 

 the right to fish as near as we pleased to the shore, the largest and the 

 best mackerel are taken. At Bird Bocks, near the Magdalen Islands, 

 where there is deep water close to the rocks, and where the mackerel 

 are undoubtedly taken close inshore (within two or three miles of the 



> Bird Kueks you will find the water to be twenty fathoms deep), all 

 around the Magdalen Islands, the mackerel fishing is stated by tUe 

 experts who prepared this map to be good the season through. Then 

 we have the Bank Bradley, the Bank Miscou, the Orphan Bank, the 

 Fisherman's Bank, and we have the fishing-ground of Pigeon Hill ; all 

 these grounds are far away from the shore, where there cannot be the 

 least doubt that our fishermen have always had the right to fish, aside 

 from any provisions of the present treaty. The most experienced and 

 successful fishermen who have testified before yon say that those have 

 been places to which they have resorted, and that there they were most 

 successful. 



Look at the testimony of Andrew Leighton, whom we heard of from 



