AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1703 



paid it ; not, they said, because they considered the right to fish farther 

 than they had fished to be worth that amount, but peace was worth it, 

 security was worth it. To escape the claws of the cutters and local 

 police, to avoid the uncertainty of a conflict of judicial opinions, such as 

 I have had the honor to lay before you, they did pay, to some extent, 

 the charge for the license. 



Then, as I have said, in that unaccountable and unaccounted for 

 manner the license-fee was increased from fifty cents to a dollar a ton, 

 and from a dollar a ton to two dollars a tou, with the certain knowledge 

 that as only a portion had paid the fifty cents and a much smaller por- 

 tion had paid the one dollar, probably none would pay the two dollars, 

 and so substantially it turned out. Now, why did they do it ? I do not 

 know, as I said before. I charge nothing upon them. I only know the 

 result was that we could not afford to pay the license. It was no longer 

 what the British Government intended it should be, a license-fee of a 

 merely nominal sum, as an acknowledgment of the right ; but it put us, 

 unlicensed, entirely in their power. Then they let loose upon us their 

 cutters and their marine police. Well, the two nations saw it would 

 not do, that the thing must be given up, and we came first to the treaty 

 of 1854, and for twelve years we had the free scope of all these shores 

 to fish where we liked, and there was peace; and certainly the British 

 Government had free trade, and there was a profit to them, and, I hope, 

 profit to us; and then we terminated that treaty, because we thought 

 it operated unequally against us. We got nothing from the extended 

 right to fish, while they got almost everything from the extended free 

 trade. Then came back the old difficulties again. We returned to our 

 duties, two dollars a barrel on mackerel and one dollar a barrel on her- 

 ring, and they returned to their system of exclusion, and their cutters, 

 and their police, an<d their arrests, and their trials. It became more 

 and more manifest that they could not use their fisheries by their boats 

 to profit, and we could not use them by our vessels to profit; and all 

 things bearing together, also the great difficulty that lay between us 

 and Great Britain with reference to the Alabama cases, led to this great 

 triumph, gentlemen, because, I do not care which party got the best of 

 it at this or that point, it was a triumph of humanity. It was a triumph 

 of the doctrine of peace over the doctrines of war. It was a substitu- 

 tion of a tribunal like this for what is absurdly called the " arbitration 

 of war." 



And now, gentlemen, that being the history of the proceedings, we 

 have laid before yon, on behalf of the United States, the evidence of 

 what Great Britain has gained in money value by our tying our hands 

 from laying any duties whatever, and she has laid before you the benefits 

 she thinks we have gained by the right to extend our fisheries along 

 certain islands and coasts, and you are to determine whether the latter 

 exceeds the former. Great Britain, I suppose, stimulated solely by the 

 Dominion, called for a money equivalent, and we have agreed to submit 

 that question ; therefore we have nothing further to say against it. We 

 stand ready to pay it if you find it, and I hope with as little remark, 

 with as little objection, as Great Britain paid the debt which was cast 

 upon her by another tribunal. The opinion of counsel sitting here for 

 seventy days in conducting the trial, and in making an argument on the 

 side of his own country, is extremely liable to be biased, and I therefore 

 do not think that my opinion upon the subject ought to be laid before 

 this tribunal as evidence or as possessing any kind of authority. I came 

 here with a belief much more favorable to the English cause I mean, 

 as to what amount, if any, Great Britain should receive from that with 



