1298 MISCELLANEOUS. 



vessel has been wantonly captured, and who finds himself and his 

 friends on shore among foreigners already sufficiently prejudiced 

 against him, without provisions and without money, to be told that 

 the court of vice-admiralty will see that justice is done him, and that, 

 if innocent, his vessel will be restored to him. The expenses of his 

 defence and the loss of the fishing season are his ruin." 



The officer who for many years made the greatest number of cap- 

 tures died in 1851. It was the opinion of Lieutenant Paine, in 1839, 

 that he was " prompted as well by his interest as by the certainty of 

 impunity" in his course towards our countrymen. We" may now pass 

 lightly over his proceedings, remarking only that, the year previous to 

 his decease, he levied contributions upon some of the masters of fishing 

 vessels he met with, compelling them to give him five, ten, or twenty 

 barrels of mackerel, according to circumstances, on pain of capture 

 for refusal.* 



To avoid misapprehension, I deem it proper to observe, in conclu- 

 sion, that I have not designed to censure the admiralty court. As long 

 ago as the war of 1812, that tribunal restored to the Academy of Arts 

 of Philadelphia a case of Italian paintings and prints captured by a 

 British vessel and sent into Halifax, on the ground that "the arts and 

 sciences were admitted to form an exception to the severe rights of 

 warfare." It has lost none of its character since. Its decisions rest 

 on the law and the testimony. Still, since integrity and learning upon 

 the bench are insufficient to insure justice without honest witnesses 

 upon the stand, American vessels have sometimes been condemned 

 wrongfully. 



The discussion may end here. The political leaders of Nova Scotia 

 have succeeded in disturbing the friendly relations which for a long 

 period existed between England and the United States. "We have 

 been on the verge of a war," says the London Times, "with a nation 

 which, from its identity in race and language with ourselves, would 

 have proved a truly formidable enemy a maritime and commercial 

 people, who would have met us with our own arms, on our own ele- 

 ment, and visited our commerce with mischiefs similar to those 

 which we should have inflicted upon theirs. So closely are the two coun- 

 tries united, that every injury we might inflict on our enemy would have 

 been almost as injurious to our merchants as bombarding our towns or 

 sinking our own ships." And it continues: "It is no exaggeration to 

 say that with this people we were on the very verge of w ar ; for, had 

 we persevered in carrying out with a high hand, by seizure and con- 

 fiscation, our own interpretation of the treaty, a collision with the 

 American commodoref was unavoidable; and such a collision must 

 almost necessarily have been followed by a formal declaration of 

 hostilities. Now, what is the question which has so nearly led to 

 such serious results? It is simply whether a certain quantity of salt- 

 fish consumed in these islands shall be caught by citizens of the 

 United States or natives of our own colonies. The question whether 

 American fishermen shall be allowed to spread their nets in the Bay of 



* There seema no reason to doubt this statement, which rests on the declarations of the 

 persona concerned. It is said, further, that this officer dared not to dispose of the fish 

 after he had obtained them, and that they were suffered to remain in store a long time. 

 Representationa on the subject were made to Mr. Webster, Secretary of State, in March, 

 1852. 



f Commodore Perry, in the steamer Mississippi. 



