1774 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



friends on the American side to point out the deposition of one witness 

 who had to correct his exauoination-in-chief when cross-examined. Can 

 we say tbe same thing of a large number of American witnesses, with- 

 out imputing to any of them the desire of stating an untruth ? They 

 have, as a rule, shown themselves so completely blinded by their na- 

 tional prejudices, that they have, unwittingly to themselves, been in- 

 duced to give to most of their statements a color which would have been 

 in an ordinary court of justice easily construed as a determined misrep- 

 resentation of facts. As an example of the reckless manner in which 

 some of the American witnesses have spoken of the relative value 

 of the fishing privileges granted by the Treaty of Washington, we refer 

 to the 21st American affidavit, subscribed to by Frank W. Friend and 

 Sydney Friend, of the firm of Sydney Friend & Bro., Gloucester, and 

 sworn to before one of the most important witnesses before this Commis- 

 sion, David W. Low, notary public and postmaster of Gloucester, who 

 could not ignore, and perhaps, wrote himself this affidavit. In answer 

 to the 34th question (p. 53): "The amount of remission of duties on 

 Canadian fish, and the free market of the United States for their mack- 

 erel and other fish, saving the expense of cutters, and the benefits of a 

 large trade from the American vessels, the admission to our coasts for 

 menhaden and mackerel, will aggregate an advantage of nearly two 

 million dollars a year in gross amount." I may here mention the fact 

 that two other witnesses wrote at full length the amount "two hundred 

 millions." (Affidavits 18 and 19:) " For this we obtain the privilege of 

 pursuing a fishery, which, after deducting expenses, will not net to the 

 American fishermen ten thousand dollars a year." 



The United States Agent and counsel, who have made a successful 

 effort to exclude from the consideration of this Commission the commer- 

 cial advantages resulting from the purchase of bait and supplies, and of 

 transshipping cargoes on our coast, have thought proper to collect a 

 mass of evidence to prove the commercial advantages resulting to Brit- 

 ish subjects from the Washington and Reciprocity Treaties. For in- 

 stance, Messrs. R. V. Knowlton and Edward A. Hortou, of Gloucester, 

 value at $2(H),(K>() per year the bait sold by Canadians to Americans ; 

 and at half a million dollars per year the goods sold to Americans for 

 refitting. 



The principal witnesses brought from Gloucester came here with such 



prejudiced minds, not to say worse, that their examination-in-chief 



seemed like an attempt to blind this Commission with one-sided state- 



ments, from which, at first sight, evolved a mystery which took us some 



time to penetrate. Taking their figures as 'they first gave them, it 



seemed a piece of folly for any American fishermen to have attempted, 



more than once or twice, to have fished in British waters, as tbe result 



>f each trip constituted a net loss the quantity of fish taken being al- 



most insignificant, and in quality unfit for the American market. Their 



<ties were arranged to create that impression. The statistics with 



the names of several linns who had pursued such an unprofitable busi- 



for a period of twenty-five and thirty years consecutively were fur- 



nished. \\ e could not find in our experience of things and men, an ob- 



stinacy of that magnitude in mercantile affairs. The cross-examination 



tilt-He witnesses, extracted piecemeal, presented these transactions 

 a different aspect, and it turned out, after all, that the Gloucester 

 owners and fishermen had had all along more sense than the wit- 

 wanted us to suppose it turned out that the fish caught in our 

 weie highly remunerative in quality, and was in quality branded 



waters 



