AWARD OP THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1675 



That, I think, we have pretty well established. I referred just now to 

 their argument, that we caught whatever we bought, but that I cer- 

 tainly may pass by. We may buy it when we wish it, but we need not 

 have it. Your honors recollect the testimony of our witnesses from 

 Provincetowu, as well as those from Gloucester, who said that they 

 believed it was more for the interest of all concerned that the cod 

 fishery should be carried on with bait kept in ice as long as it can be, 

 and salted bait with fish, and bait, and liver, and everything else that 

 can be carried out and kept there, and what birds and fish can be caught 

 on the Banks, and the vessels stick to their business. The testimony 

 was uniform ; tbere was not one who failed to join in the expression of 

 opinion, that that course was far better for the mercantile purposes of 

 our community than that our fishermen should run inshore and buy the 

 bait. But if they did go inshore and buy the bait, it would be a ques- 

 tion entirely beyond your honors' consideration. We have a right to 

 buy it where we please, even here, and we certainly need not catch it. 

 Among the curious grounds set forth to swell up the English claim 

 against us, to make it meet, if possible, the obvious money claim we 

 had against Great Britain, if it was seen fit to enforce it we now put 

 it in only as a set-off appears in the testimony that our fishing vessels 

 going into Newfoundland employed the men there to fish, and that it 

 had a very deleterious moral effect upon the habits of the Newfound- 

 land fishermen ; that they had been, up to the time the Americans 

 appeared there to buy their bait, an industrious people, in a certain 

 sense ; they had fished a certain part of the year under contracts, which 

 it seems they could not get rid of, with a class of owners who held them 

 in a kind of blissful bondage ; but that when the Americans appeared, 

 they led them to break these contracts, sometimes tempted them to fall 

 off from their agreements, and put money into their pockets ; they paid 

 them for work ; they gave them labor at a time when they ought to 

 have been lying idle, when it was better for them to lie idle ! O, it 

 steadied them, improved them, raised their moral tone to be idle, and 

 tended to preserve those desirable relations that existed between them 

 and the merchants of St. John ! A great deal was said about that ; but 

 at last there came upon the stand a witness, whose name, if I recollect, 

 was Macdounell (p. 313 of the British Testimony), a British witness. I 

 did not know that he would not be fully as well tilled with these feudal 

 opinions as the others had been. He said the people at Fortune Bay 

 were well off. I asked him : 



Q. Yon say the people down at Fortune Bay are well off? A. There are some poor 

 people there, but, as a general thing, the people are all comfortable. 



Q. You say they have piles of money stored in their houses ? A. Some of them have. 

 I know uien who went from LaHavedowu there, who were so well off they retired from 

 the fishing business. The largest part of the money they made was in supplying bait 

 to those French vessels which come from France to fish. 



Q. Where did you find them f A. At St. Peter's. The men of Fortune Bay seine 

 herring, caplin, and squid, and run them across to St. Peter's and sell them to the 

 French vessels which are lying waiting for them. 



Q. That is their market f A. Yes. 



Q. They also sell to the Americans f A. Yes, they go in and obtain a great deal of 

 bait in Newfoundland, not so much at Fortune Bay as at St. John's. 



Q. The men with piles of money, where do they live f A. They may taive plenty of 

 money and yet live in a hovel. They are not sensible enough to enjoy the money after 

 they have made it. 



Q. We have been told, on the contrary, that they pend all their money as fast as 

 they get it on rum and tobacco ; did you find that to be true T A. I doubt that, 

 the last two or three years in Newfoundland, I found very few men who drank rum, 

 but when I first went there I found many rum-drinkers. I thiuk they must have 

 had a reform club there. 



