AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1643 



men within the three-mile limit, and what advantages they derive from 

 it, and what element that will make in the calculation of the award. 



The testimony lies in a very small compass. There are three or four 

 witnesses on either side. You saw and heard them ; and I am very 

 willing to leave that whole Grand Manan business to you without one 

 word of comment upon the testimony, except to ask you one simple 

 question, as plain, practical, business men. Were you compelled to- 

 morrow to invest money in the herring fishery of Grand Manan and the 

 adjoining mainland and islands, to whom would you go for information, 

 upon whose judgment would you rely ; upon Mr. McLean, who esti- 

 mates the value of that Lilliputian fishery at $3,000,000 annually, one- 

 half of which is the unlawful plunder of United States fishermen a fish- 

 ery which, according to his estimate, would require, instead of the few un- 

 known vessels which cannot be named, a fleet which could not sail from 

 any port without being registered, and making it more than one-third 

 of all the fisheries of the United States, of all the fisheries of the Do- 

 minion, and everywhere recognized; or would you go to Mr. McLaugh- 

 lin, the keeper of one of those 165 light houses, for which we are to pay, 

 and fish-warden, who says it is his duty to make inquiries of every fish- 

 erman of his catch, but who adds that every fisherman of whom he in- 

 quired deliberately lied to him, in order to evade the school-tax, and 

 who then proceeds to fill out the returns from his inner consciousness of 

 what the returns ought to be, and makes that return double his own 

 official return to the minister of marine ? Would you not go to the 

 very men whom we have placed on the stand ; men who, and whose 

 fathers have, for sixty years been engaged in purchasing all these fish, 

 furnishing supplies to all these fishermen, directing and controlling the 

 whole business, and whose fortunes have been made and preserved by 

 their precise and complete knowledge of the value and condition of this 

 very fishery. 



And now as to the mackerel fishery. There are two singular facts 

 connected with it. The first is, that valuable as it is represented to be, 

 lying, as it is claimed to do, within an almost closed sea, the mackerel 

 fishery of the gulf has been until within a few years the industry of 

 strangers. It has not attracted native capital, it has not stimulated na- 

 tiv.e enterprise, it has not developed native ports and harbors, while 

 you claim and complain that it has built up Gloucester into established 

 wealth and prosperity, and supplies, to a large degree, a great food- 

 market of the United States. I find the following remarks in a report 

 of Commander Cochran to Vice- Admiral Seymour in 1851 : 



The curious circumstance that about one thousand sail of American schooners find 

 it very remunerative to pursue the herring and mackerel fisheries on the shores of our 

 northern provinces, while the inhabitants scarcely take any, does indeed appear 

 strange, and apparently is to be accounted for by the fact that the colonists are want- 

 ing in capital and energy. The Jersey merchants, who may be said to possess the 

 whole labor market, do not turn their attention to these branches. The business of 

 the Jersey houses is generally, I believe, with one exception, carried on by agents; 

 these persons receive instructions from their employers to devote their whole time and 

 energy'to the catching and curing of cod. Sucli constant attention to one subject ap- 

 pears at least to engender a perfect apathy respecting other branches of their trade. 

 They are all aware, I believe fully aware, of the advantages to be derived from catch- 

 ing the herring and mackerel, when these come in shoals within a few yards of their 

 doors, bnt still nothing is done. 



Commercial relations of long standing, never having engaged in the trade before, 

 possible wast of the knowledge of the markets, and the alleged want of skill among 

 the fishermen of the method of catching and curing of these fish, together with the 

 twenty per cent, duty on English fish in America, may tend to induce the Jersey 

 houses not to enter into these branches. Added to all these reasons the capital of the 

 principals is, I am informed, in most instances small. It will probably be difficult to 

 n'nd about the Bay of Chalenrs and Gaspe" any fishermen not engaged by some one of 



