AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1667 



officer, and then we were anything but safe. And they seized ns and 

 took us, not into court, but they took us into harbor, and they stripped 

 us, and the crew left the vessel, and the cargo was landed, and at their 

 will and pleasure the case at last might come into court. Then, if we 

 were dismissed, we had no costs, if there was probable cause; we could 

 not sue if we had not given a month's notice, and we were helpless. 

 Not only did it revive the expensive and annoying and irritating and 

 dangerous system of revenue-cutters, and secret police, marine police, 

 up and down the coast, telegraphing and writing to one another, and 

 burdening the provinces with the expense of their most respectable and 

 necessary maintenance, but it revived, also, the collisions between the 

 provinces and the Crown; and when the provincial governments un- 

 dertook to lay down a ten mile line, and say to the cutters, " Seize any 

 American vessel found within three miles of a line drawn from head- 

 land to headland, ten miles apart," such alarm did it cause in Great 

 Britain, that the Secretary of State did not write, but telegraphed in- 

 stantly to the provinces that no such thing could be permitted, and that 

 they could carry it no farther than the three mileline. Then attempts were 

 made to sell licenses. Great Britain said, " Do not annoy these Ameri- 

 cans; we are doing a very disagreeable thing ; we are trying to exclude 

 them from an uncertain three mile line; we would rather give up all the 

 fish in the ocean than have anything to do with it ; but you insist upon/ 

 it; we have done nothing with that fishery from the beginning," whicb, 

 according to the view we took of it on our side of the line, was pretty 

 true; and they said, "Do not annoy these Americans ; give them a 

 license, just for a nominal fee." So they charged a nominal fee, as I 

 have said, of fifty cents a ton, which was afterward raised they know- 

 why, we do not to a dollar. We paid the fifty -cent fee and some 

 Americans paid the dollar fee; and why! They have told you why. 

 Not because they thought the right to fish within three miles was worth 

 that sum, but it was worth that sum to escape the dangers and annoy- 

 ances which beset them, whether they were innocent or guilty under 

 the law. 



Then, at last, the provinces, as if determined that there should be no 

 peace on that subject until we were driven out of the fisheries, raised it to 

 an impossible sum, two dollars a ton, and we would not pay it. What 

 letl them to raise it? What motive could there have been ! They lost 

 ; by it. Our vessels did not pay it. Why, this was the result I do not 

 say it was the motive that it left our fishermen unprotected, and 

 brought out their cutters and cruisers, and that whole tribe of harpies 

 that line the coast, like so many wreckmen, ready to seize upon any 

 vessel and take it into port and divide the plunder. It left u& a prey to- 

 them and unprotected. It also revived the duties, for we, of course, re- 

 stored the duty of two dollars a barrel on the mackerel and one dollar 

 a barrel on the herring. It caused their best fishermen to return into- 

 the employment of the United States, and their boat-fishing fell off. 

 That has been stated to your honors before, but it cannot be too con- 

 stantly borne in mind. We restored the duties, and that broke up the 

 vessel-fishing of the provinces ; it deprived them of their best men ; it 

 caused trouble between the old country and the provinces; it put us all 

 on the trembling edge of possible international conflict. But we went 

 on as well as we could in that state of things, until Great Britain, de- 

 sirous of relieving herself from that burden, and the United States de- 

 siring to be released from those perils, and having also another great 

 question unsettled, that is, the consequences of the captures by the Ala- 

 bama, the two countries met together with High Commissioners at Wash- 



