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would not agree to any adjustment which did not give the Canadians free entry of fish into the markets of the United States. Finally, it was agreed that free fish and free markets should be exchanged, and leave it to be determined by a commission, to meet at Halifax, if anything more should be paid by the United States. The protocols plainly show that the American commissioners were striving sincerely for the settlement of a question that might disturb in the future the harmonious relations of Great Britain and the United States, and did not place a high estimate on the value of the privilege they were seeking to secure for American fishermen. Your committee entertain the opinion that all these facts should be brought to the attention of the British Government, with a view to seeing whether, in the light of them, they would claim the award to be a valid and just one, and to see whether in fact the two commissioners who made the award had, first, a legal power and right so to do; and, second, whether in fact they did not take into consideration questions which were not submitted to them; and if such considerations might not really have influenced or governed their award upon their view of questions not before them. When the King of the Netherlands was selected in 1827 as an umpire to decide the point at issue between England and the United States, with reference to the northeastern boundary, the United States did not hesitate to set his award aside, on the plain and justifiable ground stated by Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, that His Majesty had recommended a mode of settlement outside of the facts and terms of submission. Had Messrs. Galt and Delfosse favored the commission, and in that way the United States, with the grounds on which they based their conclusions, it might be shown that they departed as far from the facts and terms of submission as did the King of the Netherlands, and the justice of our setting aside his award, promptly and peremptorily, was never seriously disputed by the Government of Great Britain. Your committee therefore recommend that the facts connected with this award be fairly and fully submitted to the Government of Her Britannic Majesty.

In the third place your committee would suggest that, in the event of the payment of the award by the United States, the utmost care and circumspection be employed to disabuse the minds of the British and Canadian Governments, as well as the British and Canadian people, of any possible impression that the United States or the American people do or ever can accept the award of the Halifax commission as a just measure of the value of the inshore fisheries in Canadian waters. Against such inference, deduction, conclusion, or belief, the Congress of the nation, the Senators of the States, and the Representatives of the House of Representatives, and of the people, respectfully, but firmly and decidedly, protest. And they do not protest merely from a sense of the injustice that is done in the award, but also and especially because in future negotiations with England regarding trade and commerce between the United States and the Dominion of Canada, the Government of the United States will not recognize the award of the Halifax commission as, in any sense, a just measure of value of the fisheries in question.

Your committee recommend that, if its views and conclusions shall commend themselves to the approval of Congress, a concurrent resolution shall be passed by the Senate and House. And to that end a resolution is herewith submitted.

And your committee further recommend that the executive department of the United States should be authorized to pay the award, if, after correspondence with the Government of Great Britain, the President of the United States shall, without further communication with Congress, deem that such payment shall be demanded by the honor and good faith of the nation. And if in pursuance of that conclusion the award shall be paid, that the President shall, as soon as may be thereafter, lay the correspondence with the British Government relating thereto before Congress, unless, in his opinion, it shall be incompatible with the public interest so to do.

[See pp. 610, 906.]

FORTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION.

March 24, 1884.

[Senate Report No. 365.]

Mr. LATHAM, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, submitted the following report:

The Committee on Foreign relations, to whom was referred Senate bill No. 155, entitled "A bill for the protection of fish and fisheries on the Atlantic coast," having duly considered the same, respectfully report:

That your committee have carefully examined the question whether the proposed legislation is antagonistic to our treaty obligations with Great Britain as contained in the treaty of 1871. It is stipulated in the said treaty that British subjects shall have, in common with citizens of the United States, the right to take fish of any kind except shellfish on the eastern coast of the United States, north of the thirtyninth degree of latitude, without restriction as to the distance from the shore. The limitation of this right by subjects of Great Britain is such as is enjoyed by citizens of the United States, and of necessity implies that British subjects are under the same control as citizens in respect to all such regulations as may be deemed necessary and proper for the preservation of fish in the waters of the ocean adjacent to the coast of the Atlantic.

We think, therefore, that the bill under consideration is not open to the objection that it improperly interferes with our treaty obligations. The other questions arising out of the proposed legislation properly belong to the Committee on Fish and Fisheries recently appointed, and your committee ask to be discharged from the further consideration of the same, and that the bill, all papers, and the evidence taken by a subcommittee of this committee be referred to said Committee on Fish and Fisheries.

[See pp. 610, 906.]

FORTY-NINTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION.

January 19, 1887.

[Senate Report No. 1683.]

Mr. Edmunds, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, submitted the following report:

The Committee on Foreign Relations was at the last session of the Senate instructed to make inquiry into the matter of the rights and

would not agree to any adjustment which did not give the Canadians free entry of fish into the markets of the United States. Finally, it was agreed that free fish and free markets should be exchanged, and leave it to be determined by a commission, to meet at Halifax, if anything more should be paid by the United States. The protocols plainly show that the American commissioners were striving sincerely for the settlement of a question that might disturb in the future the harmonious relations of Great Britain and the United States, and did not place a high estimate on the value of the privilege they were seeking to secure for American fishermen. Your committee entertain the opinion that all these facts should be brought to the attention of the British Government, with a view to seeing whether, in the light of them, they would claim the award to be a valid and just one, and to see whether in fact the two commissioners who made the award had, first, a legal power and right so to do; and, second, whether in fact they did not take into consideration questions which were not submitted to them; and if such considerations might not really have influenced or governed their award upon their view of questions not before them. When the King of the Netherlands was selected in 1827 as an umpire to decide the point at issue between England and the United States, with reference to the northeastern boundary, the United States did not hesitate to set his award aside, on the plain and justifiable ground stated by Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, that His Majesty had recommended a mode of settlement outside of the facts and terms of submission. Had Messrs. Galt and Delfosse favored the commission, and in that way the United States, with the grounds on which they based their conclusions, it might be shown that they departed as far from the facts and terms of submission as did the King of the Netherlands, and the justice of our setting aside his award, promptly and peremptorily, was never seriously disputed by the Government of Great Britain. Your committee therefore recommend that the facts connected with this award be fairly and fully submitted to the Government of Her Britannic Majesty.

In the third place your committee would suggest that, in the event of the payment of the award by the United States, the utmost care and circumspection be employed to disabuse the minds of the British and Canadian Governments, as well as the British and Canadian people, of any possible impression that the United States or the American people do or ever can accept the award of the Halifax commission as a just measure of the value of the inshore fisheries in Canadian waters. Against such inference, deduction, conclusion, or belief, the Congress of the nation, the Senators of the States, and the Representatives of the House of Representatives, and of the people, respectfully, but firmly and decidedly, protest. And they do not protest merely from a sense of the injustice that is done in the award, but also and especially because in future negotiations with England regarding trade and commerce between the United States and the Dominion of Canada, the Government of the United States will not recognize the award of the Halifax commission as, in any sense, a just measure of value of the fisheries in question.

Your committee recommend that, if its views and conclusions shall commend themselves to the approval of Congress, a concurrent resolution shall be passed by the Senate and House. And to that end a resolution is herewith submitted.

And your committee further recommend that the executive department of the United States should be authorized to pay the award, if, after correspondence with the Government of Great Britain, the President of the United States shall, without further communication with Congress, deem that such payment shall be demanded by the honor and good faith of the nation. And if in pursuance of that conclusion the award shall be paid, that the President shall, as soon as may be thereafter, lay the correspondence with the British Government relating thereto before Congress, unless, in his opinion, it shall be incompatible with the public interest so to do.

[See pp. 610, 906.]

FORTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION.

March 24, 1884.

[Senate Report No. 365.]

Mr. LATHAM, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, submitted the following report:

The Committee on Foreign relations, to whom was referred Senate bill No. 155, entitled "A bill for the protection of fish and fisheries on the Atlantic coast," having duly considered the same, respectfully report:

That your committee have carefully examined the question whether the proposed legislation is antagonistic to our treaty obligations with Great Britain as contained in the treaty of 1871. It is stipulated in the said treaty that British subjects shall have, in common with citizens of the United States, the right to take fish of any kind except shellfish on the eastern coast of the United States, north of the thirtyninth degree of latitude, without restriction as to the distance from the shore. The limitation of this right by subjects of Great Britain is such as is enjoyed by citizens of the United States, and of necessity implies that British subjects are under the same control as citizens in respect to all such regulations as may be deemed necessary and proper for the preservation of fish in the waters of the ocean adjacent to the coast of the Atlantic.

We think, therefore, that the bill under consideration is not open to the objection that it improperly interferes with our treaty obligations. The other questions arising out of the proposed legislation properly belong to the Committee on Fish and Fisheries recently appointed, and your committee ask to be discharged from the further consideration of the same, and that the bill, all papers, and the evidence taken by a subcommittee of this committee be referred to said Committee on Fish and Fisheries.

[See pp. 610, 906.]

FORTY-NINTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION.

January 19, 1887.

[Senate Report No. 1683.]

Mr. Edmunds, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, submitted the following report:

The Committee on Foreign Relations was at the last session of the Senate instructed to make inquiry into the matter of the rights and

interests of the American fisheries and fishermen by resolution in the following words:

Resolved, That the Committee on Foreign Relations be, and it hereby is, instructed to inquire into the rights of American fishing vessels and merchant vessels within the North American possessions of the Queen of Great Britain, and whether any rights of such vessels have been violated, and, if so, to what extent; that said committee report upon the subject, and report whether any and what steps are necessary to be taken by Congress to insure the protection and vindication of the rights of citizens of the United States in the premises; that said committee have power to send for persons and papers, to employ a stenographer, and to sit during the recess of the Senate, either as a full committee or by any subcommittee thereof, and that any such subcommittee shall for the purposes of such investigation be a committee of the Senate to all intents and purposes.

Resolved, That the necessary expenses of said committee in said investigation be paid out of the appropriation for the miscellaneous items of the contingent fund of the Senate, upon vouchers to be approved by the chairman thereof.

Pursuant to this authority the committee has proceeded to make the inquiries directed by the Senate, so far as it was practicable to do during the vacation, and has taken a considerable amount of testimony which the committee believes to be of much value and importance to a proper understanding of the difficulties that have arisen between citizens of the United States and the authority of Her Majesty's dominions in North America, and which also, as the committee thinks, bears upon other questions of public policy that can be readily understood by those reading this testimony.

The questions touching the right of our citizens engaged either in the operations of fishing or commerce in the North American waters contiguous to Her Majesty's dominions depend, of course, not only upon public law, but upon the conventional arrangements that have hitherto been entered into between the United States and Her Britannic Majesty's Government.

Without going into a general review of the discussions that have in former years taken place concerning these matters, it is, as the committee thinks, suflicient to now treat these questions as they are affected by the principles of public law and by the presently existing treaty between the United States and Great Britain bearing upon the subject.

This treaty was concluded in the year 1818. To understand its just and true application it is perhaps proper to refer, by way of inducement, to the state of things theretofore existing.

The treaty of peace concluded at the end of the Revolutionary war, which acknowledged the independence of the United States, provided in its third article that the people of the United States

shall continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank, and on all the other banks of Newfoundland; also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all the other places in the sea where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish. And also that the inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty to take fish of every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use, but not to dry or cure the same on that island, and also on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of his Britannic Majesty's dominions in America; and that the American fishermen shall have liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Novia Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but so soon as the same, or either of them, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement, without a previous agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground.

This article, it will be observed, recognized an existing right and practice in respect of American fishermen exercising their calling not

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