AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1671 



thing like a set-off for what we ourselves have received ? The right to 

 fish within three miles! Why, the Americans had the whole Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence and all its bays; they had all its banks and all its eddies; 

 they had Labrador and the Magdalen Islands ; they had the north, west, 

 and south parts of Newfoundland ; they had everything except thw 

 three-mile line of the island, as it is called, and the western shore of 

 Nova Scotia. And what did they get ! Not the value of the fish ; not 

 what the fish sold for in the American market ; not the profit which the 

 American dealer made on his fish. That is the result of his capital, 

 industry, and labor. What did the American get? The value of the 

 fish as it lies writhing on the deck ? No ; for that is the result of the 

 capital that sends the ship and fits it out, of the industry and the skill 

 of the fishermen. What did they get? They got only the liberty of 

 trying to catch the fish, which were eluding them with all their skill in 

 the water of the ocean; the right to follow them occasionally, if they 

 desire to do so, in their big vessels within the limits of three miles. 



But it will not do to go to such a tribunal as this with such a case as 

 that. The free-swimming fish in the seas, going we do not know how 

 far off, and showing themselves here to-day and there to-morrow, school- 

 ing up on the face of the sea, and then going out of sight in the mud, 

 having no habitat, and being nobody's property the right to try to 

 catch them nearer the shore than heretofore, that is not capable of being 

 assessed so as to be of much pecuniary value ; we must have something 

 else." So they started the theory of adding to this compensation that 

 ought to be made for right to buy the bait: for a right to refit; for a 

 right to get supplies; for a right to trade; to unload cargoes of fish at 

 Canso and send them to the United States, and for all the damage that 

 fishermen might do anywhere by their mode of fishing; for the injury 

 done by throwing overboard the gurry, and for collisions between boats 

 and vessels that might occur in the waters of the island bend ; and, 

 adding those all together, they might make a claim that what they lost 

 in damages, and what they gave to us in facilities of trade, added to 

 Article XVIII might make up something to set off against what 

 they knew they were receiving in dollars and cents from iis by the 

 remission of duties. They felt that we had on our side a certainty ; they 

 had on their side altogether an uncertainty, and a mere speculation ; 

 tUat we remitted from our Treasury and put back into their pockets 

 exactly two dollars a barrel on every barrel of mackerel sent into port, 

 and one dollar on every barrel of herring, that was to be computed and 

 estimated, so that the British fisherman, when he landed his fish on the 

 wharf in Boston, landed it on the same terms that the American lauded 

 his while heretofore he landed it handicapped by two dollars a barrel, 

 which he muse first pay. Our charge is substantial ; ours can be put 

 into the columns of an account; ours is certain. Theirs is speculative 

 and uncertain, and unless it was backed up with some certainties of 

 damages and of trade, they felt that it fell beneath them. 



It will be my duty hereafter to press upon your honors a little further 

 the consideration of the utterly uncertain estimate that can be put upon 

 the mere franchise or liberty of attempting to catch the free-swimming 

 fish within certain limits of the ocean. Now, first, with your honors' 

 leave, I will take up the consideration of the money value of the removal 

 of this geographical restriction, for that is what it is. The ancient free- 

 dom is restored ; the recent and occasional restrictions as to three miles 

 is removed, and the colonists say that that has been of pecuniary value 

 to us. Whether it is a loss to them or not, is utterly immaterial, in this 

 consideration. They cannot ask you to give them damages for any loss 







