1672 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



to them. It is only the value to us. It is like a person buying an arti- 

 cle in a shop, and an arbitrator appointed to determine what is the value 

 of that article to the purchaser. It is quite immaterial how great a mis- 

 take the man may have made in selling it to him, or what damage the 

 want of it may have brought upon his family or himself. If I have bought 

 an umbrella across the counter, and I leave it to an arbitrator to deter- 

 mine the value of the umbrella to me, it is totally immaterial whether 

 the man has sold the only one he had, and his family have suffered for 

 the want of it. That is a homely illustration, but it is a perfectly true 

 one. The question is, what is the value to the citizens of the United 

 States, in money, of the removal of this geographic restriction ! Not 

 what damage this may have been to the colonists, by reason of the 

 treaty which Her Majesty's Government saw fit to make witn us. 



What, then, is the money-value of the removal of the restriction ! 

 On the subject of Newfoundland, which I desire to treat with great re- 

 spect, because of the size of the island and its numerous bays, and be- 

 cause of my respect and affection for the gentleman who represents the 

 semi-sovereignty before this tribunal, there is an article in the Eevue 

 des Deux Mondes of November, 1874, on the value of Newfoundland 

 and its fisheries to France, of extreme interest, from which I would like 

 to quote largely. It seems to me to be exhaustive. It gives the whole 

 history and present condition of these fisheries, and among other things, 

 it shows that in attempting to grant us a right there, Great Britain 

 made us overlap very much the rights of the French; and that if we 

 should undertake to carry into effect some of the rights given us by the 

 Treaty of 1871, we might havejthe republic, or monarchy, or empire, or 

 whatever it may be, on the other side of the water, to settle the question 

 with as well as this tribunal. I suppose this tribunal is satisfied that 

 we do not catch cod within three miles of Newfoundland ; that we do 

 not catch even our bait there, but that we buy it. Finding that we had 

 proved a complete case, that we bought our bait there, the very keen 

 argument was made by the counsel on the other side, that though we 

 bought our bait, we must be held to have caught it. " Qui facit per 

 of/Mm, facit per se," says the counsel ; and so, if you buy a thing of a 

 man ami he sends a boy out to get it, the boy is your messenger, not 

 his : and you have not bought it of him, but of the person to whom he 

 semis for it. This is a homely illustration, but it is perfectly plain. 

 When a fisherman comes and says, "I will sell my fish at so much a 

 pound," and has not got them, but goes off and catches them, and I pay 

 him that price, I buy the fish of him, do I not! What is it but a mere 

 illusion, a mere deception, a mere fallacy to say, that because I knew 

 that he had not the fish on hand at the time and is going off to get it, 

 though I agree to buy it of him at a fixed rate, and I am not going to 

 pay him for his services, but for the fish when delivered, that I am fish- 

 ing through him and not buying of him ? It is very hard to argue a per- 

 fectly clear case, and one that has but one side to it. Nothing but 

 stress of law, or stress of facts, or stress of politics, could possibly have 

 caused so much intelligence to be perverted upon this subject into an 

 attempt to show that we were the catchers of the Newfoundland bait, 

 I will now take up for a moment the question of the cod fisheries, and 

 know that, whatever 1 may have been thus far, I shall be somewhat 

 tedious here in the course which I am about to pursue; but I do not 

 ish it to be said on the other side, and my instructions are not to leave 

 to be said, that we have asserted and stopped at assertions, however 

 rtam we may be that our assertions are well-founded, and even that 

 they have the approbation of the court. I shall endeavor to refer to 



