

1G60 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



free fishing as well as free trade in fish. We bad upon the stand Cap- 

 tain Hardinge, of Her Majesty's Navy, now or formerly, who had taken 

 an active part in superintending these fisheries, and driving off the 

 Americans. He was asked whether the maintenance of this marine 

 police was not expensive. He said that it was expensive in the extreme, 

 that it cost 100,0001 believe that was the sum named. He did not 

 know the amount, but his language was quite strong as to the expen- 

 siveness of excluding the Americans from these grounds, of maintain- 

 ing these cruisers. But it also brought about difficulties between Great 

 Britain and her provinces. The provincial authorities, on the 12th of April, 

 1866, after this time (but they acted throughout with the same purpose 

 and the same spirit) undertook to say that every bay should be a Brit- 

 ish private bay which was not more than ten miles in width ; following 

 no pretence of international law, but the special treaty between Great 

 Britain and France; and afterward they gave out licenses for a nominal 

 sum, as they said, for the purpose of obtaining a recognition of their 

 right. They did not care, they said then, how much the Americans 

 tished within the three miles, but they wished them to pay a "nominal 

 sum for a license," as a recognition of the right. Well, the " nominal 

 sum" was 50 cents a ton ; but by and by the colonial parliament thought 

 that nothing would be a "nominal sum" unless it was $1 a ton, and at 

 last they considered that the best possible "nominal sum" was $2. 



But Her Majesty's Government took a very different view of that sub- 

 ject, and wherever there has been an attempt to exclude American fish- 

 ermen from the three-mile line, there has been a burden of expense on 

 Great Britain, a conflict between the Colonial Department at London 

 and the Provincial authorities here, Great Britain always taking the 

 side of moderation, and the Provincial Parliaments the side of extreme 

 claim and extreme persecution. Then there was a difficulty in settling 

 the three-mile line. What is three miles ? It cannot be measured out, 

 as upon the land. It is not staked out or buoyed out. It depends upon 

 the eye-sight and judgment of interested men, acting under every pos- 

 sible disadvantage. A few of the earlier witnesses called by my learned 

 friends for the Crowi undertook to say that there was no difficulty in 

 ascertaining the three-mile line, but I happened to know better, and we 

 called other witnesses, and at last nobody pretended that there was not 

 great difficulty. Why, for a person upon a vessel at sea to determine 

 the distance from shore, everything depends upon the height of the land 

 he is looking at. If it is very high, it will seem very much nearer than 



f it is low and sandy. The state of the atmosphere affects it ex- 

 tremely. A mountain-side on the shore may appear so near in the fore- 

 noon that you feel that you can almost touch it with your finger's ends, 

 while in the afternoon it is remote and shadowy, too far altogether for 

 an expedition with an ordinary day's walk to reach it. Now, every hon- 

 est mariner knows that is so, and knows there is great difficulty in de- 

 termining whether a vessel is or is not within three miles of the shore, 

 when she is fishing. But there is, further, another difficulty. "Three 

 miles from the shore" what shore? When the shore is a "straight or 

 curved line, it is not difficult to measure it ; but the moment you come 

 to bays, gulfs, and harbors, then what is the shore t The headland 

 question then arose, and the Provincial officials told us the Provinces - 

 by their acts, and the proper officers by their proclamations, and the 



nicer* of their cutters, steam or sail told our fishermen upon their 

 quarter-decks that " the shore" meant a line drawn from headland to 

 headland, and they undertook to draw a line from the North Cape to 

 the East Cai>e of Prince Edward Island and to say that "the shore" 



