AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1C 69 



taken notion, though a natural one, among the provinces themselves, 

 and to please the people of the Dominion and of Newfoundland, and that 

 the great value of the removal of the restriction is, that it restores peace, 

 amity, and good-will; that it extends the fishing so that no further 

 question shall arise in courts or out of courts, on quarter-decks or else- 

 where, whatever may be the pecuniary value of the mere right of fishing 

 by itself; and that it would be far better if the Treaty of Washington 

 had ended with the signing of the stipulations, except so far as the 

 Geneva award was concerned, and that this question had not been made 

 a matter of pecuniary arbitration ; that either a sum of money had been 

 accepted at the time for a perpetual right, as was offered, or that some 

 arrangement by which there should be the mutual right of free trade in 

 timber, in coal, and in fish, or something permanent in its character, 

 should have been arranged between the two countries. But that is a 

 by-gone ; we are to meet the question as it comes now directly before 

 us. I think my learned friend, Judge Foster, said all that need be said, 

 and all that can be said of much value, in taking the position that we 

 are not here to be cast in damages; we are to pay no damages, nor are 

 we to pay for incidental commercial privileges, nor are they to pay for 

 any ; but it is a matter of remark, certainly, that when this cause came 

 up, we were met by a most extraordinary array of claims on the oppo- 

 site side, sounding in damages altogether, or sounding in purchase of 

 commercial privileges which were not given to us by Article XVIII of 

 the treaty. Why, if there was a British subject in Prince Edward 

 Island who remembered that his wile and family had been frightened 

 by some noisy, possibly drunken, American fisherman, he was brought 

 here and testified to it, and he thought that he was to obtain damages. 

 Undoubtedly that was his opinion. If a fisherman in his boat thought 

 that a Yankee schooner " lee bowed" him, as they call it, he was brought 

 here to testify to it, arid that was to be a cause of damage and to be 

 paid for, and ultimately, I suppose, to reach the pockets of those who 

 in their boats had been " lee-bowed," for that would seem to be poetic 

 justice. Then we had the advantage of being able to buy our bait here, 

 which we had always done, about which no treaty had ever said a word, 

 and they had the great advantage, too, of selling us their bait. They 

 went out fishing for themselves, they brought in the bait, they sold it 

 to us, and when our vessels came down after bait or for frozen herring, 

 they boarded the vessels in their eagerness to be able to sell them ; and 

 so great was their need of doing something in that season of the year 

 when those mighty merchants of Newfoundland and those mighty mid- 

 dle-men of Newfoundland, planters, had nothing for them to do, that 

 they made a bargain to furnish us frozen herring and our fishing bait 

 at so much a barrel, went out and got it for us, and brought it on board. 

 Those were privileges for which the Americans were also to pay some- 

 thing. 1 have no doubt that those ideas gained great currency among 

 the people of these provinces. They supposed it to be so, and hence a 

 great deal of the interest which they took in the subject ; hence the 

 millions that they talked about. It Ks impossible to tell what limitation 

 could have been put by this tribunal upon the demand, if you had opened 

 that subject, and made up an award on the right to buy bait, on the 

 right to buy frozen herring, on the right to buy supplies, on the right to 

 trade, not considering that these are mutual rights, for the bent-tit of 

 both parties, and as to which it is almost impossible to determine which 

 party gains the most. Then a great deal of anxiety was created through 

 the provinces, undoubtedly, by the cry that we were ruining their fish- 

 eries by the kind of seines that we were using purse-seines ; we were 



