AWARD OF TBE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1627 



there is no equivalent that can be introduced in the place of the taxed 

 article. It might just as well be said that a wood lot ten miles Irom 

 town is worth as much as a wood lot five miles from town. Wood will 

 sell for a certain price, and the man who is the farthest oft', and who has 

 the greatest expense in hauling the wood to market, is the man who 

 gets the least profit. 



It was estimated in the debates on the Treaty of Washington that 

 the tax on mackerel at that time amounted to fifty per cent. It was 

 truly stated to be a prohibitory duty. You will remember that Mr. Hall 

 has also given you a practical view of this subject. Mr. Hall, Mr. My- 

 rick, and Mr. Churchill located on Prince Edward Island. To be sure 

 it is their misfortune not yet to be naturalized British subjects. Detract 

 whatever you choose from the weight of their evidence because they are 

 Americans, but give to it as much as its intrinsic candor and reasonable- 

 ness require at your hands. What do these gentlemen tell you of their 

 practical condition ! Mr. Hall says that when the duties were put on, 

 at first, the people on the island were helped by a good catch, a good 

 quality, and by a short catch in the United States, and by the condition 

 of the currency, but when they began to feel the full effect of the impo- 

 sition of the duties they were ruined. His partner confirms the same 

 story. Mr. Churchill, the other man, whose business it is to hire by the 

 mouth the fishermen of the island, and pay them wages, says he could 

 not afford to hire the men if a duty was put up on the fish. Do you sup- 

 pose he could ? The fish landed on the shore of Prince Edward Island 

 are worth $3.75 a barrel; that is what they are sold for there. The fish- 

 ermen earn for catching them from $15 to $25 a mouth. Put a tax of 

 $2 on to $3.75 worth of mackerel and can there be any doubt of the 

 result! 



If this subject interests you, or if it seems to you to have a bearing 

 npon the result, I invite your careful attention to the testimony of Hall, 

 Myrick, and Churchill. Do they not know what the result of putting a 

 tariff upon their mackerel would be f Do not the people of Prince Ed ward 

 Island know! If they have been stimulated to a transient, delusive 

 belief that they may in some way get the control of the markets of the 

 United States for the eighty or ninety thousand barrels which, at the 

 utmost, is produced in the provinces and put the price up as high as 

 ever they please, do you think that that delusion will be dissipated, and 

 that their eyes will be most painfully opened, if it ever comes to pass 

 that a duty shall be reimposed ! 



It may be said that this question of duties is a question of commercial 

 intercourse, and that it is for the benefit of all mankind that there should 

 be free commercial intercourse, no matter whether one side gains and 

 the other side loses or not; no matter where the preponderance of ad- 

 vantage is, we believe in untrammeled commercial intercourse among 

 the whole human family. I am not at all disposed to quarrel with that 

 doctrine. But that is not the case we are trying here. We are trying 

 a case under a treaty where there has been an exchange of free fish 

 against free fishery, and you are to say on which side the preponderance 

 of benefits lies. We have no right, then, to indulge theories as to uni- 

 versal freedom of trade, because we are bound by a charter under which 

 we are acting. You are to have regard to this question, so the treaty 

 says. Everybody has had regard to it since it first began to be agitated 

 in both countries. Statesmen, public writers, business men they have 

 all considered it of the utmost consequence, and certainly thus Commis- 

 sion, enjoined in the treaty to have regard to it, are not going to disre- 

 gard it and leave it out of consideration. 



