PERIOD FROM 1871 TO 1905. 843 



seas, carrying on, under shelter of the flag of the United States, legiti- 

 mate commerce. The Government which you so honorably represent 

 has, with its usual candor and magnanimity, conceded that when a 

 merchant vessel of the United States is stopped in time of peace by a 

 British cruiser on the groundless suspicion of being a slave trader, 

 damages are to be paid to this Government not merely to redress the 

 injury suffered, but as an apology for the insult offered to the flag of 

 the United States. But the case now presented to you is a much 

 stronger one than that of a seizure on the high seas of a ship unjustly 

 suspected of being a slaver. When a vessel is seized on the high seas 

 on such a suspicion, its seizure is not on waters where its rights, based 

 on prior and continuous ownership, are guaranteed by the sovereign 

 making the seizure. If in such case the property of the owners is 

 injured, it is, however wrongful the act, a case of rare occurrence, on 

 seas comparatively unfrequented, with consequences not very far 

 reaching ; and if a blow is struck at a system of which such vessel is 

 unjustly supposed to be a part, such system is one which the civilized 

 world execrates. But seizures of the character of that which I now 

 present to you have no such features. They are made in waters not 

 only conquered and owned by American fishermen, but for the very 

 purpose for which they were being used by Captain Forbes, guaran- 

 teed to them by two successive treaties between the United States and 

 Great Britain. 



These fishermen also, I may be permitted to remind you, were en- 

 gaged in no nefarious trade. They pursue one of the most useful and 

 meritorious of industries. They gather from the seas, without detri- 

 ment to others, a food which is nutritious and cheap, for the use of an 

 immense population. They belong to a stock of men which contrib- 

 uted before the Revolution most essentially to British victories on the 

 Northeastern Atlantic, and it may not be out of place to say they have 

 shown since that Revolution, when serving in the Navy of the United 

 States, that they have lost none of their ancient valor, hardihood, and 

 devotion to their flag. 



The indemnity which the United States has claimed, and which 

 Great Britain has conceded, for the visitation and search of isolated 

 merchantmen seized on remote African seas on unfounded suspicion 

 of being slavers, it cannot do otherwise now than claim, with a grav- 

 ity which the importance of the issue demands, for its fishermen 

 seized on waters in which they have as much right to traverse for 

 shelter as have the vessels by which they are molested. This shelter, 

 it is important to observe, they will as a class be debarred from if 

 annoyances such as I now submit to you are permitted to be inflicted 

 on them by minor officials of the British Provinces. 



Fishermen, as you are aware, have been considered, from the use- 

 fulness of their occupation, from their simplicity, from the perils to 

 which they are exposed, and from the small quantity of provisions 

 and protective implements they are able to carry with them, the 

 wards of civilized nations; and it is one of the peculiar glories of 

 Great Britain that she has taken the position a position now gen- 

 erally accepted that even in time of war they are not to be the sub- 

 jects of capture by hostile cruisers. Yet, in defiance of this immu- 

 nity thus generously awarded by humanity and the laws of nations, 

 the very shelter which they own in these seas, and which is ratified 

 to them by two successive treaties, is to be denied to them, not, I am 



