AWAED OP THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1691 



there always will be mackerel. Suitors, irritated men, may be meshed 

 withiu the seine which the privileged lawyer may cast out ; but it does not 

 follow that the mackerel can be. On the contrary, they are so shrewd 

 and so sharp that our fishermen tell us that they cannot use a seine 

 within their sight; that they will escape from it. But the lawyer is so 

 confident in the eagerness of the client for a lawsuit, that, instead of 

 concealing himself, and taking him unawares, he advertises himself and 

 has a sign of his place of business. Suppose we were to compare it to 

 the case of a lawyer who had a general license to practice law in all 

 parts of a great city, but not a monopoly. Everybody else had the same 

 right; but he was excluded from taking part in cases which should arise 

 in a certain suburb of that city, not the best, not the richest, not the 

 most business-like, and which had alwyers of its own living tbere, accus- 

 tomed to the people, who maintained the right to conduct all the law- 

 suits that might arise in that district. What would it be worth to a 

 lawyer who had the whole city for . the field of labor, plenty to do, to 

 have his right extended into that suburb I What would it be worth if 

 that suburb was an indefinable one, not bounded by streets, but by 

 some moral description, about which there would be an eternal dispute, 

 and about which the lawyer might be in constant trouble with the police- 

 man ? What would be its value ? Who can tell ? Or a physician or 

 merchant I Suppose a merchant is asked to pay for a license to buy and 

 sell, to keep a retailer's shop ; everybody else has the same right that he 

 has, and half the people are doing it without any license ; but he is asked 

 to pay for a license. What is it worth to him ? Why, not much, at 

 best. But suppose that the license was confined to the right to deal in 

 Newfoundland herring. While everybody else could deal with other 

 fish, his license extended his trade to Newfoundland herring alone. Why, 

 his answer would be, " There are plenty of herring from other places 

 that I can deal with. There is a large catch in the gulf ; there is a large 

 catch on the Labrador shore ; and what is it worth to me, with my hands 

 full of business, to be able to extend it a little farther, and include the 

 dealing with this particular kind of fish?" 



None of the analogies seem to me to hold. Your honors can do noth- 

 ing else than first to look at the practical result iu the hands of business 

 ^men; and the result is this: To those who live upon the shore and can 

 go out day after day, and return at night, iu small boats, insisting but 

 little capital, going out whenever they see the mackerel, and not other- 

 wise, and coming back to finish a day's work upon their farms to them 

 it is profitable, for almost all they do is profit; but to those who come 

 from a distance, requiring a week or a fortnight to make the passage, in 

 large vessels, which the nature of the climate and of the seas requires 

 should be large and strong, and well manned, who have the deep sea 

 before them, and innumerable banks and shoals, where they can fish 

 to them the right to fish a little nearer inshore is of very much less value. 

 That is the position of the American; the other is the position of the 

 Englishman. And the fact that we have steadily withdrawn more and 

 more from that branch of the business is a proof that it is of little value. 



Then, beyond that, I suppose, you must make some kind of estimate, 

 for I am not going to argue that the faculty is of no value. I suppose 

 the right to extend our fisheries so far is of some value. I can find no 

 fair test of it. But recollect, Mr. President and gentlemen, as I say 

 again, that it is but a faculty, which would be utterly useless in the 

 hands of some people. Why, it has been found utterly useless in the 

 hands of the inhabitants of \his Dominion. What did they do with it 

 until they took to their day and nights boat fishing? What has become 



