AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1619 



tremely abundant in the waters in tlie vicinity around Newfoundland. 

 They have disappeared from all of those places, though, strange to sa y 

 oue schooner did get a trip of mackerel in a Newfoundland bay this 

 summer, off the French coast, so that we are not obliged to pay for it 

 in the award of this Commission ; it was in waters where we had a right 

 to fish before the Treaty of Washington. But this business, notoriously 

 precarious, where no man cau foretell the results of a voyage, or the re- 

 sults of a season, will pretty much pass away, so far as it is pursued by 

 United States vessels. They will run out on our own coast; they will 

 catch what tney can and carry them to market fresh, and what cannot bo 

 sold fresh they will pickle. They will, when prospects are good, make 

 occasional voyages here, but as for coming in great numbers, there is 

 no probability that they will ever do it again. Our friends in Nova 

 Scotia and upon the island are going to have the local fishery to them- 

 selves ; I hope that it will prove profitable to them; I have no doubt it 

 will prove reasonably profitable to them, because they, living on the 

 coast, at home, cau pursue it under greater advantages than the men of 

 Massachusetts cau. They are very welcome to all the profits they are 

 to make out of it, and they are very welcome, if they are not ungener- 

 ous in their exactious from us, to all the advantages they derive from 

 sending the fish that they take in their boats or vessels in Nova Scotia 

 and Prince Edward Island to our markets, all they can make by selling 

 them there. I am sure no one will grudge them. 



I come now to a branch of this case which it seems to me ought to 

 decide it, whatever valuation, however extreme, may be put upon the 

 quantity of mackerel caught by our vessels iu the territorial waters of 

 the provinces. I mean the duty question ; the value of the remission of 

 duties iu the markets of the United States to the people of the Domin- 

 ion. We have laid the statistics before you, and we find that in 1874 

 there was $3 io,181 saved upon mackerel and herring, and $20,000 more 

 saved upon fish-oil. There was, therefore, $355,972 saved in 1874. In. 

 1875 there was a saving of $375,991 and some cents; in 1876, $353, 24J. 

 I get these figures by adding to the results of table No. 4, which shows 

 the importation of fish, the results of table N->. 10, which shows the fish 

 oil. The statistics are Mr. Hill's. In table No. 5 you will find the quan- 

 tities of mackerel and herring. The dutiable value of mackerel was 

 two dollars a barrel ; of herring, oue dollar a barrel, and of smoked her- 

 ring, five cents a box. 



We are met here with the statement that the consumer pays the du- 

 ties; and our friends on the other side seem to think that there is a law 

 of political economy as inexorable as the law of gravitation, according 

 i to which, when a man has produced a particular article which he offers 

 for sale, and a tax is imposed on that article, he is sure to get enough 

 more out of the man to whom he sells the article to reimburse the tax. 

 That is the theory, and we have heard it from their witnesses "the con- 

 sumer pays the duties" as if they had been trained in it as an adage of 

 political economy. But, gentlemen, I should not be afraid to discuss 

 that question as applicable to mackerel and herring and the cured fish 

 that come from the Dominion of Canada into the United States before 

 any school of political economists that ever existed in the world. [ do 

 not care with what principles you start, principles of free trade or prin- 

 ciples of protection, it seems to me that it can be proved to demonstra- 

 tion that this is a case where the duties fall upon those who catch the 

 fish in the Dominion, and not upon the people of the United S f ates who 

 buy and eat them. The very treaty under which you are acting requires 

 you to have regard to the value of the free market, ordains that iu mak- 



