Volume Iv Part 17 (2/2)

In their efforts to carry out such a policy the treaty gave the Canadians a very great advantage. As Mr. Secretary Bayard insisted, it certainly trangressed usual international comity when our s.h.i.+ps were refused needed pilots, or our hungry crews were forbidden to purchase food in Canadian ports; but our President and Senate had, in 1818, agreed that such cruelty should be legal. To ask for comity in the matter was to ask for the voidance of the treaty.

As little could we, agreeably to the treaty, presume, by use of home permits to ”touch and trade,” to turn a fis.h.i.+ng vessel at will into a merchant vessel, as was often tried in order to evade the offensive restrictions, or demand the liberty of freighting fish home overland in bond. It would equally have amounted to a quas.h.i.+ng of the treaty, had the British and Canadians interpreted it by the easy canon of Mr.

Phelps: ”The question is not what is the technical effect of the words, but what is the construction most consonant to the dignity, the just interests, and the friendly relations of the sovereign powers.”

Interesting but also untenable was our Government's plea for freedom to purchase bait for deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng. Of old, mackerel had been caught almost solely with hooks, by the ”chumming” process. In 1850 the purse seine was introduced. Soon after 1870 its use became general, and entirely revolutionized the business of taking mackerel. Huge quant.i.ties of the fish could now be captured far out in the open sea, making fis.h.i.+ng much more profitable near home, and greatly lessening the value to us of Canada's fis.h.i.+ng-grounds. From these premises Mr. Bayard argued that the true intent of the 1818 agreement, which was to protect insh.o.r.e fis.h.i.+ng territory, would not be violated should we be allowed to buy bait in Canada. It was replied that the old treaty was meant to prevent our fishermen from making Canadian harbors in any way a base of operations.

”It was framed with the object of affording a complete and exclusive definition of the rights and liberties which the fishermen of the United States were thenceforward to enjoy in following their vocation, so far as those rights could be affected by facilities for access to the sh.o.r.es or waters of the British Provinces, or for intercourse with their people. It is therefore no undue expansion of the scope of that convention to interpret strictly those of its provisions by which such access is denied, except to vessels requiring it for the purposes specifically described. Such an undue expansion would, upon the other hand, certainly take place if, under cover of its provisions, or of any agreements relating to general commercial intercourse which may have since been made, permission were accorded to United States fishermen to resort habitually to the harbors of the Dominion, not for the sake of seeking safety for their vessels or of avoiding risk to human life, but in order to use those harbors as a general base of operations from which to prosecute and organize with greater advantage to themselves the industry in which they are engaged.

”Mr. Bayard suggests that the possession by a fis.h.i.+ng vessel of a permit to 'touch and trade,' should give her a right to enter Canadian ports for other than the purposes named in the treaty, or, in other words, should give her perfect immunity from its provisions. This would amount to a practical repeal of the treaty, because it would enable a United States collector of customs, by issuing a license, originally only intended for purposes of domestic customs regulation, to give exemption from the treaty to every United States fis.h.i.+ng vessel. The observation that similar vessels under the British flag have the right to enter the ports of the United States for the purchase of supplies loses its force when it is remembered that the convention of 1818 contained no restriction on British vessels, and no renunciation of any privileges in regard to them.”

[1887]

For some weeks in the spring and summer of 1886, the fishery dispute greatly excited our country. Even threats of war with Canada were uttered in case its government should not recede from its aggravating position, and careful estimates made of the force we could throw across our northern border in three days. In May, 1886, Congress placed in the President's hands power to suspend commercial intercourse between the two countries. Later in the year a bill was introduced in the House cutting off all commercial relations with Canada by land or water. The Senate advanced a more moderate proposition, to limit the proposed arrest of traffic to water commerce and to Canadian vessels, also to leave its enforcement optional with the President. This became law on March 3, 1887. Under this legislation the President, on being a.s.sured that fis.h.i.+ng masters or crews were treated in Canadian ports any less favorably than masters or crews of trading vessels from the most favored nations, could, ”in his discretion, by proclamation to that effect, deny vessels, their masters and crews, of the British dominions of North America, any entrance into the waters, ports, or places of or within the United States.”

[1888]

The President, however, did not think best at once to use this fearful power, likely enough to lead to war. He preferred to make another attempt at a peaceful settlement, through a new treaty. This had constantly been the wish of the British Government. Accordingly, later in the year 1887, a joint commission, consisting of Secretary Bayard, President Angell, of Michigan University, Hon. William L. Putnam, of Maine, on the part of the United States, and of Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, Sir Charles Tupper, of Canada, and Sir Lionel West, the British minister, on the part of Great Britain, met at Was.h.i.+ngton. The commission toiled nearly all winter, and pa.s.sed to the President the result of its deliberations on February 16, 1888.

The treaty which it drafted was necessarily a compromise. Canada thought the British commissioners had yielded too much; many in the United States believed our commissioners to have done the same. The doc.u.ment, approved by the President, went to the Senate, where, after long debate, it was refused ratification, August 21st.

The commission had agreed upon a modus vivendi, to hold good, unless revoked by the Governor-General and Council of Canada, till February, 1890, under which our fishermen might obtain in Canadian ports, on payment of a license, the privileges of merchantmen. Many such licenses were taken out during the season of 1888, showing the advantages which they conveyed. Most of the fis.h.i.+ng-masters, however, did not seek licenses and were averse to the new treaty, preferring the terms of 1818 to granting their rivals any further rights in our markets. Fresh fish, including frozen and slack-salted, was already free in our ports, competing sharply with our own catch. No one longer cared to fish inside, or, except in emergencies, to provision at Canadian towns.

Convenient as would be the power to obtain bait near the fis.h.i.+ng-grounds and to trans-s.h.i.+p fish home in bond, neither was indispensable. Cod are still caught with trawls and baited hooks. The best bait is squid, whose abundance upon the Banks is what causes the cod so to frequent them. The squid can be had freshest as well as cheapest from the peasantry of the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia coasts; but clams carried from home were found to do nearly as well. They would remain fresh better than squid, but got off the hooks more easily. Accordingly, few collisions occurred in 1888, and as the season of that year closed there was prospect that, even without a new convention, no necessity for American retaliation would arise.

[1892]

This chapter shall close with a word touching the Alaska fisheries question, which, fortunately, had advanced a good step. In 1870 the United States leased the Pribylov, or Seal Islands off Alaska, to the Alaska Commercial Co. Pressed by this company, which naturally wished the completest possible monopoly of seal-fis.h.i.+ng, our Government foolishly affected to treat the entire Behring Sea as a mare clausum, belonging to the United States. Several British craft engaged in taking seals were seized by United States vessels considerably more than three miles from land. Great Britain of course protesting, a treaty, ratified in March, 1892, submitted to arbitration the question between the two governments. Seven arbitrators sat, two from the United States, Justice Harlan and Senator Morgan, and one each from Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, France, and Italy. This Board decided against the American contention, denying the right of the United States to a.s.sume the protection of seals or any property in them outside the ordinary three-mile limit. Happy provisions were, however, made for a joint police of Behring Sea by the two nations, for an open and a closed fis.h.i.+ng season, and for the careful licensing of sealing vessels.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SOUTH

[1886-1870]

It cannot be denied that the radical method of reconstruction resorted to by Congress occasioned dreadful evils. Among other things it ignored the natural prejudices of the whites, many of whom were as loyal as any citizens in the land. The South, subjected to a second conquest after having laid down its arms, felt outraged and grew sullen. To most people in that section, as well as to very many at the North, this dictation by Congress to acknowledged States in time of peace seemed high-handed and guilty usurpation. Northern Congressmen incessantly called slavery barbarism, and yet combined to trans.m.u.te to-day into electors and law-makers those who but yesterday had been slaves. Black legislatures inevitably abused their power, becoming the instruments of base carpetbag leaders and rings in robbing white property-holders.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Political cartoon. Two men labeled ”Ohio” hanging from a tree.]

A Facsimile put in Evidence before the Congressional Committee.

”[From the Independent Monitor, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, September 1, 1868.]”

”A PROSPECTIVE SCENE IN THE CITY OF OAKS, 4TH OF MARCH, 1869.”

”Hang, curs, hang! * * * * * Their complexion is perfect gallows, Stand fast, good fate, to their hanging! * * * * *

If they be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable.”

”The above cut represents the fate in store for those great pests of Southern society--the carpet-bagger and scalawag--if found in Dixie's land after the break of day on the 4th of March next.”

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