1692 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



of their fish ing- vessels? Gone! The whole inshore and outshore fish- 

 ery became of 110 value to them, until they substituted this boat-fishing, 

 which we cannot enter into. Then, having before you this very abstract 

 right or facultv, obliged to disconnect from it everything except this 

 that it is an extension of the field over which we had a right to work 

 you can get nothing, I think, upon which you can cast a valuation. Nor 

 is it strictly analogous to a field for labor, because a field for labor is a 

 specific thfug. When you buy it, you know what it will produce; and 

 if you sow certain seed, you will get certain results; and then, having 

 deducted the value of your labor, and skill, and industry, and capital, 

 and allowed yourself interest, the residue, if any, is profit. That depends 

 upon the nature of the soil with which you have been dealing. But 

 nothing of that sort can be predicated of the free-swimming fish. They 

 are here to-day and there to-morrow; they have no habitat; they are 

 nobody's property, and nobody can grant them. 



I have dealt with this subject as I said we were to deal with it; not 

 to depreciate it unreasonably, but to analyze it, and try to find out how 

 we are to measure it. And having analyzed it in this way which I am. 

 sure is subject to no objection, unless I carry it to an extreme the meth- 

 ods which 1 have used in themselves are subject to no objection it can- 

 not be strange to your honors that the people of the United States said, 

 through their government, that in securing from Great Britain her with- 

 drawal of this claim of exclusion from these three miles, we did it, not for 

 the commercial or intrinsic value of the right, so much as because of 

 the peace and freedom from irritation which it secured to us. And that 

 leads me to say what, perhaps, I should otherwise have forgotten, that 

 in estimating the value to the people of the United States of the right 

 to pursue their fisheries close to the shore in certain regions, you are not 

 to estimate what we have gained in peace, in security from irritation, 

 Irom seizures, and from pursuit. Those are the acts and operations of 

 the opposite party. It is the value of the right to fish there, alone, that 

 you are to consider. Why, if you pay to an organ-grinder a shilling to 

 go out of your street when there is sickness in your house, it does not 

 tollow that his music was worth that price. Nobody would think of 

 considering that a test of the value of his music, if a commission was 

 appointed to determine what it was. So here; what we were willing to 

 do to get rid of a nuisance, of irritation, of dangers of war, of honest 

 mistakes, and opportunities for pretended mistakes what we were will- 

 ing to pay for all that, is no proof of the price at which we set the mere 

 liberty of being there peacefully and in the exercise of a right. 



The people of the United 'States can never look upon this exclusion, 

 under the Treaty of 1818, as anything more than a voluntary surrender, 

 on their part, for a treaty purpose, over a certain limited region, of 

 what they believed to be their right their right bv virtue, as I.had the 

 honor to say to this tribunal yesterday, of the grants in the charters of 

 MaH.sachuHetta and the other New England provinces, of an unlimited 

 right to fish over all this region a right which we won by our own bow 

 and spear; the whole privilege being contested between the French and 

 .uglish, all of which might have become French, I do not think I am 

 going too fur in saying, had it not been for the prowess and determina- 

 tion of >ew England. I reminded your honors yesterday of instances 



which we had contributed to force out the French from this country, 

 > make it British, to make the seas British seas, and the fisheries British 



aeries, in trust for the Crown and for ourselves. I may add one case, 



lore interesting and bearing directly upon this province, and that is, 



uiial expulsion of the French, which was carried out at Grand Pr4 



