AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1777 



IX. 



FINAL ARGUMENT OF MR. THOMSON ON BEHALF OF HER BRITANNIC 



MAJESTY. 



MONDAY, November 19. 

 The Conference met. 



May it please your excellency and your honors : 



It has now become my duty, after this long and tedious inquiry has 

 been concluded, as far as the evidence is concerned, to present the final 

 argument on behalf of Her Majesty's Government. I could wish, in 

 view of the great importance of the issue, that the matter had been 

 placed in abler hands. I shall not go very much into the historical 

 question which has been involved in this inquiry, because my learned 

 friends who preceded me have gone fully into that ; and, although I dis- 

 sent from some of the views presented by the learned counsel for the 

 United States, and may, incidentally, in the course of my remarks, have 

 occasion to state some particulars of that dissent, I do not think there 

 is anything that calls upon me consider the subject at length. 



There was one matter which, if I may use the expression of my learned 

 friend, the Agent of the United States, at one time appeared likely to 

 loom up with very great importance. I refer to the headland question. 

 I feel that I can congratulate this Commission that, for the purpose of 

 their decision upon the subject submitted to them, that question does not 

 assume any importance whatever in this inquiry. But I wish to guard 

 myself distinctly from assenting to the view presented by Mr. Foster, 

 when alluding to that subject. He rather appeared to assume that, for 

 practical purposes, this headland question had been abandoned by Her 

 Majesty's Government, and that the mode of conducting this inquiry, 

 'on the part of the counsel for Her Majesty's Government, showed such 

 an abandonment. I beg to set my learned friends on the other side 

 right upon that matter. There has been no abandonment whatever. It 

 only comes to this: that in this particular inquiry the evidence has so 

 shaped itself, on either side, that your excellency and your honors are 

 not called upon to pronounce any opinion on the subject. There can be 

 no doubt that, under the terms of the treaty, your excellency and honors 

 are not empowered to pronounce any authoritative decision, or effect any 

 final settlement of that much-vexed question. 



Incidentally, no doubt, it might have fallen within your province to 

 determine whether the contention of the British or of the American 

 Government, in reference to that question, were the correct one ; be- 

 cause, had it been shown that large catches had been made by the 

 American fishermen within the bodies of great bays, suck as Miramichi 

 and Chaleurs, it would have become at once necessary to come to a 

 decision as to whether we were entitled to be credited with those catches. 

 But, in fact, no such evidence has been given. And that course wa; 

 taken somewhat with the view of sparingiyou the trouble of investigat 

 ing that question, when the treaty did not empower you to effect a linal 

 decision of it. The learned counsel, associated with me on behalf 

 Her Majesty's Government, and myself, shaped our evidence as much 

 as possible with reference to the inshore fisheries. We concluded that 

 if the American Government, who had put this matter prominent!: 

 ward in their brief, intended to challenge a decision from this 

 sion, they ought to have given evidence of large catches made by t 

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