165G AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



session. "Be it so,*' your honors may say, "but could not Great Brit- 

 ain take it from her colonies? 7 ' Well, the greatest philosopher who- 

 gave his life to statesmanship, Edmund Burke, said: "That is a ques- 

 tion which can better be discussed in the schools, where alone it can be 

 discussed with safety." He compared it with the question of the right 

 to shear wolves. He was not disposed, perhaps, to deny the right in 

 the abstract, but as a servant of the Crown he could not advise the 

 Crown to try that kind of experiment. I recollect that when, before 

 our civil war, an ardent and enthusiastic admirer of slavery said on the 

 lloor of Congress that capital ought to own labor, and that we had 

 made a great mistake in Xew England that the capitalist did not own 

 the men who worked in the factories and the men who followed the sea, 

 Mr. Quiucy replied by an anecdote respecting the bounty which the 

 State of Maine gave for every wolf's head. A man was asked why he 

 did not raise a flock of wolves for the bounty; he said it would turn out, 

 he was afraid, to be a hard flock to tend. And the wisest men in Great 

 Britain and I can say this in the presence of gentlemen who are almost 

 all British subjects now, without fear of giving offense the wisest men 

 of Great Britain thought it was an attempt which had better -not be 

 made. But the act of March, 1775, urged by the obstinacy of George 

 III and his adherence to worn out traditions, was passed. After a con- 

 flict with the colonies on the subject of the stamp-act and the tea-tax^ 

 that fatal act was passed, aimed at home rule, self-government, and the 

 trade of the New England people or rather, 1 should say, in the first 

 instance, of Massachusetts, because it was Massachusetts over which 

 the contest was waged during the early part of our struggle and 

 attempting to undo all we had been doing for one hundred and fifty 

 years ; to revolutionize our entire political system, and instead of leav- 

 ing us what we had enjoyed for that time, home rule, to substitute a 

 government at St. James or St. Stephen's. Among other things, they 

 provided that we should be deprived of our right in the fisheries. The 

 statute acknowledged the existence of it, but Massachusetts was to be 

 deprived of her right by the act of Parliament. 



Then came the debate, fiercer than ever, "Can Parliament take from 

 us this right f' Well, it rested upon the assumption that all the grants 

 the charters vested in us were held at the discretion of Parliament, and 

 if Parliament could take away our fisheries, she could take away our 

 landmarks, she could take Boston and Salem, which had been granted 

 to us under the same charter that the fisheries had been granted ; and 

 when that act was passed, Burke, and Fox, and Sheridan, and Barre", 

 and others, our friends in the British Parliament, called it a simple 

 provocation to rebellion. Burke said, " it is a great penal bill which 

 passed sentence on the trade and sustenance of America." Xew Eng- 

 land refused obedience; the other colonies assisted her, and we always 

 treated it as void. Then came the war, and what was the effect of that 

 on onr title? Why, may it please you, gentlemen, I do not deny that 

 war has an effect, but not the kind of effect which has been contended 

 for by the British Government and by counsel. I agree that war puts 

 at hazard, not only every right of a nation, but the existence of the 

 There are boundary lines before war, and they are good against 

 neutrals, and good between one another, unless something else happens; 

 but the boundary lines and everything they have are put at stake by the 

 f one party entirely conquers the other, it has a right to decide 

 upon the future existence of the other nation and all its rights; and 

 when our ancestors pledged their " lives, fortunes, and sacred honor " 

 to maintain all their rights, including this right against the demands of 



