officer, and then we were anything but safe. And they seized us and took us, not into court, but they took us into harbor, and they stripped us, and the crew left the vessel, and the cargo was landed, and at their will and pleasure the case at last might come into court. Then, if we were dismissed, we had no costs, if there was probable cause; we could not sue if we had not given a month's notice, and we were helpless. Not only did it revive the expensive and annoying and irritating and dangerous system of revenue-cutters, and secret police, marine police, up and down the coast, telegraphing and writing to one another, and burdening the provinces with the expense of their most respectable and necessary maintenance, but it revived, also, the collisions between the provinces and the Crown; and when the provincial governments undertook to lay down a ten mile line, and say to the cutters, "Seize any American vessel found within three miles of a line drawn from headJand to headland, ten miles apart," such alarm did it cause in Great Britain, that the Secretary of State did not write, but telegraphed instantly to the provinces that no such thing could be permitted, and that they could carry it no farther than the three mile line. Then attempts were made to sell licenses. Great Britain said, "Do not annoy these Americans; we are doing a very disagreeable thing; we are trying to exclude them from an uncertain three-mile line; we would rather give up all the fish in the ocean than have anything to do with it; but you insist upon it; we have done nothing with that fishery from the beginning," which, according to the view we took of it on our side of the line, was pretty true; and they said, "Do not annoy these Americans; give them a license, just for a nominal fee." So they charged a nominal fee, as I have said, of fifty cents a ton, which was afterward raised-they know why, we do not-to a dollar. We paid the fifty-cent fee and some Americans paid the dollar fee; and why? They have told you why. Not because they thought the right to fish within three miles was worth that sum, but it was worth that sum to escape the dangers and annoyances which beset them, whether they were innocent or guilty under the law.

Then, at last, the provinces, as if determined that there should be no peace on that subject until we were driven out of the fisheries, raised it to an impossible sum, two dollars a ton, and we would not pay it. What led them to raise it? What motive could there have been? They lost by it. Our vessels did not pay it. Why, this was the result-I do not say it was the motive-that it left our fishermen unprotected, and brought out their cutters and cruisers, and that whole tribe of harpies that line the coast, like so many wreckmen, ready to seize upon any vessel and take it into port and divide the plunder. It left us a prey to them and unprotected. It also revived the duties, for we, of course, restored the duty of two dollars a barrel on the mackerel and one dollar a barrel on the herring. It caused their best fishermen to return into the employment of the United States, and their boat-fishing fell off. That has been stated to your honors before, but it cannot be too constantly borne in mind. We restored the duties, and that broke up the vessel-fishing of the provinces; it deprived them of their best men; it caused trouble between the old country and the provinces; it put us all on the trembling edge of possible interuational conflict. But we went on as well as we could in that state of things, until Great Britain, desirous of relieving herself from that burden, and the United States desiring to be released from those perils, and having also another great question unsettled, that is, the consequences of the captures by the Alabama, the two countries met together with High Commissioners at Wash

ington, in 1871, and then made a great treaty of peace. I call it a "treaty of peace" because it was a treaty which precluded war; not restored peace after war, but prevented war, upon terms most honorable to both parties; and as one portion of that treaty-one that, though not the most important by any means, nor filling so large a place in the public eye as did the congress at Geneva, yet filling a very important place in history, and its consequences to the people of both countries, was the determination of this vexed and perpetual question of the rights of fishing in the bays of the Northwestern Atlantic; and by that treaty we went back again to the old condition in which we had been from 1620 down, with the exception of the period between 1818 and 1854 and the period between 1866 and 1871. That restored both sides to the only condition in which there can be peace and security; peace of mind at least, freedom from apprehension, between the two goverments.

And when those terms were made, which were terms of peace, of goodwill to men, of security for the future, and of permanent basis always, and we agreed to free trade mutually in fish and fish-oil, and free rights of fishing, as theretofore almost always held, Great Britain said, "Very well; but there should be paid to us a money-compensation." The United States asked none; perhaps it did not think itself entitled to any. Great Britain said, "This is all very well; but there should be a compensation in money, because we are informed by the provinces"-I do not believe that Great Britain cared anything about it herself "that it is of more pecuniary value to the Americans to have their right of fishing extended over that region from which they have been excluded than it is to us to have secured to us free right to sell all over the United States the catchings of Her Majesty's subjects, free from any duty that the Americans might possibly put upon us." "Very well," said the United States, "if that is your view of it, if you really think you ought to have a moneycompensation, we will agree to submit it to a tribunal." And to this tribunal it is submitted: First, under Article XVIII of the Treaty of 1871, what is the money-value of what the United States obtains under that article? Next, what is the money-value of what Great Britain ob. tains under Articles XXI and XIX? Second, is what the United States obtains under Article XVIII of more pecuniary value than what Great Britain obtains under her two articles? Because I put out of sight our right to send to this market and the right of the people of the provinces to fish off our coasts, as I do not think either of them to be of much consequence. "If you shall be of opinion," says the treaty, "that there is no difference of value-and of course that means no substantial difference in value-then your deliberations are at an end; but if you shall think there is a substantial difference in value, then your deliberations must go further, to show what the two values are, which is the greater, and what is the difference."

I hope, if your honors are not already persuaded, that you will be be fore the close of the argument on the part of the United States, and may not be driven from that persuasion by anything that may occur on the other side, that the United States were quite honest when they made the statement in 1871 that in asking for the abandonment of the restrictive system in regard to the fisheries, they did not do it so much from the commercial or intrinsic value of the fishing within the threemile line, as for the purpose of removing a cause of irritation; and I hope that the members of this tribunal have already felt that Great Britain, in maintaining that exclusive system, was doing injustice to herself, causing herself expense, loss, and peril; that she was causing irritation and danger to the United States; that it was maintained from a mis

taken notion, though a natural one, among the provinces themselves, and to please the people of the Dominion and of Newfoundland, and that the great value of the removal of the restriction is, that it restores peace, amity, and good-will; that it extends the fishing so that no further question shall arise in courts or out of courts, on quarter-decks or elsewhere, whatever may be the pecuniary value of the mere right of fishing by itself; and that it would be far better if the Treaty of Washington had ended with the signing of the stipulations, except so far as the Geneva award was concerned, and that this question had not been made a matter of pecuniary arbitration; that either a sum of money had been accepted at the time for a perpetual right, as was offered, or that some arrangement by which there should be the mutual right of free trade in timber, in coal, and in fish, or something permanent in its character, should have been arranged between the two countries. But that is a by gone; we are to meet the question as it comes now directly before us. I think my learned friend, Judge Foster, said all that need be said, and all that can be said of much value, in taking the position that we are not here to be cast in damages; we are to pay no damages, nor are we to pay for incidental commercial privileges, nor are they to pay for any; but it is a matter of remark, certainly, that when this cause came up, we were met by a most extraordinary array of claims on the opposite side, sounding in damages altogether, or sounding in purchase of commercial privileges which were not given to us by Article XVIII of the treaty. Why, if there was a British subject in Prince Edward Island who remembered that his wife and family had been frightened by some noisy, possibly drunken, American fisherman, he was brought here and testified to it, and he thought that he was to obtain damages. Undoubtedly that was his opinion. If a fisherman in his boat thought that a Yankee schooner" lee bowed" him, as they call it, he was brought here to testify to it, and that was to be a cause of damage and to be paid for, and ultimately, I suppose, to reach the pockets of those who in their boats had been "lee-bowed," for that would seem to be poetic justice. Then we had the advantage of being able to buy our bait here, which we had always done, about which no treaty had ever said a word, and they had the great advantage, too, of selling us their bait. They went out fishing for themselves, they brought in the bait, they sold it to us, and when our vessels came down after bait or for frozen herring, they boarded the vessels in their eagerness to be able to sell them; and so great was their need of doing something in that season of the year when those mighty merchants of Newfoundland and those mighty middle-men of Newfoundland, planters, had nothing for them to do, that they made a bargain to furnish us frozen herring and our fishing bait at so much a barrel, went out and got it for us, and brought it on board. Those were privileges for which the Americans were also to pay something. I have no doubt that those ideas gained great currency among the people of these provinces. They supposed it to be so, and hence a great deal of the interest which they took in the subject; hence the millions that they talked about. It is impossible to tell what limitation could have been put by this tribunal upou the demand, if you had opened that subject, and made up an award on the right to buy bait, on the right to buy frozen herring, on the right to buy supplies, on the right to trade, not considering that these are mutual rights, for the benefit of both parties, and as to which it is almost impossible to determine which party gains the most. Then a great deal of anxiety was created through the provinces, undoubtedly, by the cry that we were ruining their fish. eries by the kind of seines that we were using-purse-seines; we were

destroying the fish, and the ocean would be uninhabitable by fish; would be a desert of water. We were told that we were poisoning their fish by throwing gurry overboard, and for all that there were to be damages. Now, these inflammatory harangues, made by politicians, or published in the Dominion newspapers, or circulated by those persons who went about through the Dominion obtaining affidavits of witnesses, produced their effect, and the effect was a multitude of witnesses who swore to those things, who evidently came here to swear to them, and took more interest in them, and were better informed upon them, than upon any of the important questions which were to be determined. When we came to evidence to be relied upon, the evidence of men who keep books, whose interest it was to keep books, and who kept the best possible books, men who had statistics to make up upon authority and responsibility, men whose capital and interest and everything were invested in the trade, then we brought forward witnesses to whom all persons looking for light upon this question would be likely to resort. And I have no doubt that as fast as it became known through the line of these provinces that no damages would be given for "lee-bowing," for poisoning fish, for purse-nets (which it appears we could not use), nor for the right to buy bait, and that it was to come down to the simple question of, on the one hand, participating with them in the fisheries of this region to the full extent, instead of to a limited extent, and they be relieved from all duties on their fish and fish-oil on the other, with the consequent stimulation of their boat-fishing, and vessel building and fishing, they all began to look at it in a totally different aspect. I am not able to produce it at this moment, but I will produce before the argument closes a memorial addressed to the Province of Nova Scotia, requesting them to bring things back to the old condition-that the fishing shall be left in common-without any idea that free trade was to be set off against it.

Such was the state of things and the condition of feeling in the provinces. I need not press upon your honors that we are right in that position, for, as to all except the question of damages, your honors have already by a unanimous vote passed in our favor, and of course it requires no argument to show that, as we are to make compensation for the value of what we obtain under the Article XVIII of the Treaty of 1871 in addition to what we had under the Treaty of 1818, provided the British side of the account does not balance it, that is all that we have to consider; and I dismiss all those elements which have undoubtedly been the prevailing means of securing witnesses and of stimulating witnesses throughout these provinces, up to the present time.

After the sound sense and humor of iny learned friend, Mr. Trescot, on the subject of the light-houses, I suppose I should be inexcusable if I touched upon them again. I see that the counsel on the other side already feel the humor of the thing, and I suppose they rather regret that the subject was ever opened, because it shows to what straits they were driven to make up a case against the United States, to balance the overpowering advantage to them derived from the freedom of trade. Why, they come together, the wise men, and they say among themselves, "Free trade is a boon to us in our mackerel and in our herring; it is stimulating our fisheries; it is recalling our sons from afar, and employing them at home in our own industries; it is building up boatfishing; it is extending the size of our boats, and building up vesselfishing; the profits on our trade are now all that we have a right to make, with no discount whatever. How can we meet that case of advantage? What can we say they ought to pay us, that shall be any

thing like a set-off for what we ourselves have received? The right to fish within three miles? Why, the Americans had the whole Gulf of St. Lawrence and all its bays; they had all its banks and all its eddies; they had Labrador and the Magdalen Islands; they had the north, west, and south parts of Newfoundland; they had everything except the three-mile line of the island, as it is called, and the western shore of Nova Scotia. And what did they get? Not the value of the fish; not what the fish sold for in the American market; not the profit which the American dealer made on his fish. That is the result of his capital, industry, and labor. What did the American get? The value of the fish as it lies writhing on the deck? No; for that is the result of the capital that sends the ship and fits it out, of the industry and the skill of the fishermen. What did they get? They got only the liberty of trying to catch the fish, which were eluding them with all their skill in the water of the ocean; the right to follow them occasionally, if they desire to do so, in their big vessels within the limits of three miles.

But it will not do to go to such a tribunal as this with such a case as that. The free-swimming fish in the seas, going we do not know how far off, and showing themselves here to-day and there to-morrow, schooling up on the face of the sea, and then going out of sight in the mud, having no habitat, and being nobody's property-the right to try to catch them nearer the shore than heretofore, that is not capable of being assessed so as to be of much pecuniary value; we must have something else." So they started the theory of adding to this compensation that ought to be made for right to buy the bait; for a right to refit; for a right to get supplies; for a right to trade; to unload cargoes of fish at Canso and send them to the United States, and for all the damage that fishermen might do anywhere by their mode of fishing; for the injury done by throwing overboard the gurry, and for collisions between boats and vessels that might occur in the waters of the island bend; and, adding those all together, they might make a claim that what they lost in damages, and what they gave to us in facilities of trade, added to Article XVIII might make up something to set off against what they knew they were receiving in dollars and cents from us by the remission of duties. They felt that we had on our side a certainty; they had on their side altogether an uncertainty, and a mere speculation; that we remitted from our Treasury and put back into their pockets exactly two dollars a barrel on every barrel of mackerel sent into port, and one dollar on every barrel of herring, that was to be computed and estimated, so that the British fisherman, when he landed his fish on the wharf in Boston, landed it on the same terms that the American landed his while heretofore he landed it handicapped by two dollars a barrel, which he must first pay. Our charge is substantial; ours can be put into the columns of an account; ours is certain. Theirs is speculative and uncertain, and unless it was backed up with some certainties of damages and of trade, they felt that it fell beneath them.

It will be my duty hereafter to press upon your honors a little further the consideration of the utterly uncertain estimate that can be put upon the mere franchise or liberty of attempting to catch the free-swimming fish within certain limits of the ocean. Now, first, with your honors' leave, I will take up the consideration of the money value of the removal of this geographical restriction, for that is what it is. The ancient freedom is restored; the recent and occasional restrictions as to three miles is removed, and the colonists say that that has been of pecuniary value to us. Whether it is a loss to them or not, is utterly immaterial, in this consideration. They cannot ask you to give them damages for any loss