AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1701 



the shore, on the ground that they were iu the King's chambers; 

 when they claimed that the Gulf of St. Lawrence was the King's cham- 

 ber, where we had no right to fish; when the three-mile line was a new 

 thing iu international law ; when each nation found it could not compel 

 the other and both were desirous of peace; both had seen enough of 

 fighting to desire that there should be no more lighting between breth- 

 ren, that they should not shed brothers' blood over any contestation in 

 a mere matter of money or interest, and not so much a matter of honor, 

 of sentiment, as it might have been at any moment if any blood had 

 been shed then the two great powers came to a compromise, and Great 

 Britain agreed, by implication, that she would not assert any claim of 

 exclusion anywhere beyond the ordinary lines. Not a word was said 

 on that subject. She never surrendered those extreme claims in terms, 

 any more than she surrendered in terms the right to board our ships 

 and take from them, at the discretion of the commander, any man whom 

 the officer thought spoke the English tongue as an Englishman and not 

 as an American. It was never conceded to us, although we fought a 

 war upon it, but no one believed it would ever be attempted again to 

 be put in force. But as to what was specifically done it was a com- 

 promise. Great Britain was not to exclude us from the Magdalen 

 Islands within the three-mile line, or any geographical limit of the Mag- 

 dalen Islands, or from Labrador from Mount Joly northward indefinitely, 

 or from certain large portions of the coast of Newfoundland; and, on 

 the other hand, we agreed that England might exclude us it was a 

 treaty agreement during the continuance of the treaty from the rest of 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence within three miles of the shore. Unquestion- 

 ably, as the letters of Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Rush, who made the treaty, 

 show, we thought we had gained all that was of value at that time. It 

 was not until about the year 1830 that this great change in the fisheries 

 themselves came in, when they ceased to be exclusively cod fisheries, 

 and became mainly mackerel fisheries. Then the importance of lauding 

 upon the shores to dry our nets and cure our fish was reduced to noth- 

 ing; I mean practically nothing. We put it in the Treaty of 1871, but 

 it has never been proved that we made any use of that liberty or power. 

 The advent of the mackerel one of those strange mutations which 

 seem to govern those mysterious creatures of the sea the advent of 

 'the mackerel to this region, and to Massachusetts Bay, put a new coun- 

 tenance upon all this matter. It undoubtedly gave an advantage to the 

 British side, and put us at once to somewhat of a disadvantage. Then 

 came the demand of the islanders and of the people of the Dominion, 

 and others, to carry into effect this exclusive system, to drive our fisher- 

 men off, not only from the three-mile line, as we understand it, but from 

 the three-mile line as any captain of a cruiser chose to understand it. 

 Nobody knew what the three-mile line was. Was it to be drawn from 

 headland to headland ? They so claimed. They made maps and marked 

 out a line, running the whole length of Prince Edward Island, within 

 three miles of which we must not go. They made other lines, so that the 

 Bay of St. Lawerence, instead of being an open bay, an international 

 bay, for the use of all, was cut up into preserves for fish, for the sole 

 use of the inhabitants of the Dominion, by these artificial lines, drawn 

 upon no international authority ; and we never could know where we 

 were, whether we were liable to seizure or not; and we could not pre- 

 dict what decisions the courts might make against us in case we were 

 seized. It was a dangerous, a most unjust and unhappy state of things, 

 the attempt to carry out the claim of exclusion at all, and nobody tell 

 it more than Great 'Britain. She felt that it was, as one of the captains 



