borately prepared and ably argued on both sides.
Reduced to its most simple statement, the contention of the United
States Government was this: that the duty of the Commission was
limited; that it was charged with the decision of no political or
diplomatic questions; that all such questions had been determined by
the high contracting parties in signing the treaty of Washington; and
that this Commission was simply a reference for an accounting in a
given department of trade. They contended that the value of the
inshore fisheries was simply their value as mackerel fisheries; that
to estimate one-fourth of the whole mackerel-catch as taken by American
fishermen was a liberal, even an extravagant concession on the part of
the United States; and that the remission of duty on Colonial fish and
fish-oil, which was admitted to be worth $350,000 per annum to the
Dominion of Canada, was an ample equivalent.

In presenting the British case every consideration was put forward by
the clever men who represented it, to magnify the concession made to
the United States. They dwelt at great length upon the thousands of
miles of coast thrown open to Americans; upon the fabulous wealth of
the fisheries, where every one caught had, like the fish of the miracle
in Scripture, a bit of money in its mouth; upon the fact that the
chief resource and variety of fishing lay within the three-mile limit.
They managed to obscure the real issue by great masses of confused
statistics, and caused the sparsely settled provinces to appear as
granting an extraordinary privilege to American fishermen, in allowing
their nets to be dried and their fish to be cured on the sands and
rocks of their remote and uninhabited coasts.

After the respective cases had been stated and all the evidence and
arguments heard it was found that the difference of opinion between the
British and the United-States Commissioners were irreconcilable. The
decision was therefore left to Mr. Delfosse--as was anticipated from
the first. He estimated the superior advantage of the privilege of
the inshore Colonial fisheries, over such as were given to British
subjects in American waters, at $5,500,000 for their twelve years'
use. The result of the negotiation, therefore, was that for twelve
years' use of the inshore British Colonial fisheries which were ours
absolutely by the treaty of 1782, we paid to the British Government
the award of $5,500,000, and remitted duties to the amount