105 
The Dominion of Canada pays liberal subsidies in developing 
the fisheries, and the business is earnestly prosecuted with ap¬ 
parent success. The completion of the railroad to Halifax, and 
the prospective benefit from the “ Treaty of Washington,” will 
stimulate the colonial fisheries and rear a grand commerce. 
The fishing industry engaged the most earnest attention of 
our early statesmen; the war of Independence sprung out of 
measures directly affecting that business. The restoration of 
peace, the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the wheels 
of government being in motion, the time was opportune for in¬ 
augurating measures of relief to the fishermen. In 1790, 
President Washington, in his annual message, submitted to 
Congress, that “The navigation and the fisheries of the United 
States are objects too interesting not to inspire a disposition to 
promote them by all means which shall appear to us consistent 
with their natural progress and permanent prosperity.” Con¬ 
gress acted on that wise policy and appropriated a specific sub¬ 
sidy, graduated to the capacity of the vessels emphtyed in the 
fisheries. In 1802, President Jefferson urged upon Congress 
the propriety of fostering our fisheries “ as nurseries of navi¬ 
gation and the nurture of man.” Here we behold the master 
mind of the period leading in the path of progress, “ the man 
of great ideas,” who, in the Declaration of Independence, in¬ 
dicted the British King for open violation of English law's ; the 
political economist, wdio, in the very first year of our national 
existence, equipped Ledyard and sent that famous traveler to 
the northwest coast of our continent for the purpose of finding 
the Columbia river and its facilities for commerce ; the far-seeing- 
patriot under whose auspices Lewis and Clark crossed to the 
Pacific to locate a national route ; the philosophic brain which 
stimulated Astor to plant an American colony in the wilds of 
Oregon to develop the fur trade among the Indian tribes in those 
regions, and to inaugurate commercial intercourse with the 
people of eastern Asia; this live statesman now prevails on 
Congress to w r eld the connecting link in the chain of American 
destiny, by subsidizing the fisheries as the sure nursery of a 
mighty commerce. The committee to whom this matter w r as 
referred, submitted that “ There was too much reason to belie%e 
{hat both the whaling and codfisheries had been for some time 
on the decline. ... As a means to reanimate them they 
recommend that vessels actually employed in the fisheries sjiould 
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