TOTAL FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. GOLD. SILVER. 1850-1856 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1,894,650,000 $ 688,200,000 1866-1881 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,687,225,000 1,183,875,000]
[(4) The Naval expenditures for the sixteen years following the war were as follows:—
Four years under President Johnson . . . . . $114,500,000
Eight years under President Grant . . . . . 154,500,000
Four years under President Hayes . . . . . . 57,000,000]
CHAPTER XXVII.
The question of the fisheries has been in dispute between Great Britain and the United States for more than seventy years. During that period it has been marked by constantly recurring, and sometimes heated, controversy; and it will continue to be a source of irritation until the two Government can reach a solution which shall prove satisfactory, not only to the negotiators, but to the class of brave and adventurous men who, under both flags, are engaged in the sea-fisheries. For a long period each recurring season brought its series of complaints, often threatening violence between the fishermen, and tending to bring the two Governments into actual collision. An adjustment was effected by the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 and again by the Treaty of Washington in 1871, but for so brief a time under each agreement as only to postpone the difficulty and not to settle it. There is a right and a wrong side to this questions, and either the Government of the United States or the Government of England is to blame for the chronic contention which marks it.
The American case can be briefly stated. When the independence of the Colonies was recognized in the preliminary treaty of 1782 the provisions agreed upon in regard to two subjects were held by both Governments to be final and perpetual. One was the territory embraced within the boundaries conceded to the United States: the other was the right to the fisheries. The people of the Colonies, especially the people of the New-England Colonies, had as British subjects used all the British fisheries in what is now known as the Dominion of Canada and the island of Newfoundland; and in the preliminary treaty to which George III. gave his assent in 1782, as well as in the final and more definite treaty of 1783, it was provided that the privilege should continue to be enjoyed by citizens of the new Republic.(1) No doubt of the intent and proper construction of this clause in both treaties had ever been suggested, until the English and American negotiators were engaged in framing the treaty of peace at Ghent in 1814, at the close of the second war with Great Britain. The British negotiators claimed that the war of 1812 had put an end to all existing treaties, and that, the fishery clause in the treaty of 1782 being no longer in force, our fishery rights had expired, and if revived at all must be revived under new stipulations.
The direct purpose of this movement was obvious. By the treaty of 1782 it was declared that "the navigation of the Mississippi River from its source to the ocean shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and to the citizens of the United States." It was at that time assumed that the boundary line between the territory of British America and the United States, as set forth in the treaty of peace, would at a certain point cross the Mississippi River, and that the navigation of that river would thus be secured to the subjects of his Britannic Majesty. But his was soon ascertained to be an error, and to that end that the line might be determined with precision the Jay treaty of 1794 provided for a joint survey. By the time of the negotiation of the Treaty of Ghent, twenty years later, it was definitely ascertained that the northern boundary of the United States ran above the sources of the Mississippi, while the purchase of Louisiana had given to our Government the control of the mouth of the river. Hence the privilege of navigating the Mississippi (so earnestly desired by the British Government) could not be insisted on, since the river from its source to the sea was wholly within the territory of the United States. If, therefore, our fishery rights were void by the abrogation of the fishery clause of the treaty of 1792, the restoration of those rights could be demanded only in exchange for some equivalent; and the equivalent to be asked, as was well known, would be the concession to Great Britain of the free navigation of the Mississippi River.
The position thus taken by the British Government was plainly untenable. The treaty of 1782 was only the formal declaration of certain facts consequent upon the termination of the Revolutionary war. That treaty recognized three conditions as fully established: I. The independence of the thirteen Colonies. II. The territorial limits of the United States. III. The rights and methods of the common fisheries in Colonial waters which the citizens of the United States had exercised as British subjects.—The history of the negotiation and the explicit language of the treaty prove that the clause touching the fisheries was the recognition of an existing right and not the grant of a new right. The British Government, in 1814, might with equal force and justice have claimed that under this theory of the abrogation of the treaty of 1782 by war, the recognition of our independence and the establishment of our boundaries had also become void. It is a rather curious fact, apparently unknown or unnoticed by the negotiators of 1814, that as late as 1768 the law officers of the Crown under the last Ministry of Lord Chatham (to whom was referred the treaty of 1686 with France, containing certain stipulations in reference to the Newfoundland fisheries) gave as their opinion that such clauses were permanent in their character, and that so far the treaty was valid, notwithstanding subsequent war. The American negotiators of course refused to admit the principle (that the war of 1812 had put an end to any provision of the treaty of 1782) or its application; and the result was that the Treaty of Ghent was signed and ratified, without any provisions either as to the Fisheries or the navigation of the Mississippi River,—a position which left the United States in the full exercise of its rights under the treaty of 1782, from which it could be excluded only by the exercise of force on the part of the British Government. There was no danger of force being applied. The war of 1812 had satisfied Great Britain that she could gain nothing by going to war with the United States.
Within four years of this time a treaty was negotiated and ratified, which is altogether the most inexplicable in our diplomatic history. The war just concluded with Great Britain had reflected the highest honor upon our navy; while on land we had demonstrated, if not the absolute impossibility, certainly the serious difficulty and danger, of an invasion of our soil by any foreign power. We had risen greatly in the estimation of the world as to our capacity for war, and we had learned the especial importance of maintaining the fisheries as the nursery of our sailors. The State Department was under the direction of John Quincy Adams, who, above all statesmen of his day, was supposed to appreciate the value of the fisheries and who had stubbornly refused at Ghent to consent to any diminution of our fishing-rights even if the alternative should be the continuation of the war. Yet on the 20th of October, 1818, a treaty was concluded at London, containing as its first and most important provision an absolute surrender of some of our most valuable rights in the fisheries. The negotiation was conducted by Albert Gallatin and Richard Rush, men of established reputation for diplomatic ability and patriotic zeal. The history of the transaction is meagre. A brief and most unsatisfactory correspondence contains all that we know in regard to it. Neither in the minute and important diary of Mr. Adams, nor in the private letters, as published, of Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Rush, is there the slightest indication of any reason for recommending, or any necessity for conceding, the treaty.
By reference to the Third Article of the treaty of 1782, already quoted, it will be seen that the rights of the citizens of the United States were recognized; first, to take fish of every kind on the Great Bank, and on all the other banks of Newfoundland, and also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and at other places in the sea where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time before the treaty to fish; second, to take fish of every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen should use, but not to dry or cure the same on that island; third, to take fish of every kind on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of his Britannic Majesty's dominions in America; fourth, to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador. By the provisions of the First Article of the treaty of 1818, the right to take fish on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador was limited to certain portions of the coast, without prejudice, however, to any of the exclusive rights of the Hudson Bay Company; second, the right to dry and cure fish was granted on the limited portions of the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, so long as they remained unsettled; third, for this privilege of drying and curing fish, the United States "renounced forever and liberty theretofore enjoyed or claimed by the inhabitants thereof to take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors of his Britannic Majesty's dominions in America not included within the limits so described." Of this extraordinary renunciation Mr. Rush wrote, many years after: "We [Mr. Gallatin and himself] inserted the clause of renunciation; the British plenipotentiaries did not desire it."