sels within forbidden waters may extend to the forfeiture of vessels and supplies and cargoes; while for other offenses against Canadian law penalties may be imposed not to exceed $3 for every ton of the vessel. Trials are to be summary and inexpensive at the place of detention unless a change is made for the convenience of the defendant. Reasonable bail is to be taken, and there is to be no appeal, except for the defense; and judgments are, before execution, to be reviewed by the superior Canadian authorities. (Article XIV.)

These stipulations against oppressive methods of criminal prosecution of our fishermen and their vessels are either too many or too few. It ought not to be necessary for us to a tempt by treaty to secure for Americans actually offending against just laws exemption from the methods of trial prescribed by those laws; while if we really propose to protect by treaty our citizens and their property against the harsh and oppressive Canadian statutes, enacted to harass us into opening our markets to Canadian producers, it will be necessary to go much further than does this Article XIV.

It expresses and recognizes the right of Canadian courts to forfeit our ships, cargoes, and supplies without adequately defining the offenses of "unlawfully fishing" and "preparing to unlawfully fish," or properly limiting the penalties which may be imposed. Canada is left free to declare any act unlawful not expressly allowed by the treaty. In addition to forfeitures she may fine and imprison the officers and crew. They can not appeal to London, to the Privy Council, nor to the Queen. The proceedings are to be summary, and the President can not interfere by diplomatic representation. The treaty fails to stipulate that intention or guilty knowledge must exist to constitute the offense, and the fisherman may be punished if he is the tenth of a mile or one foot, and that unwillingly, out of his intended course. Our own revenue and fishing laws carefully provide for remissions of penalties when there is no intention to do wrong and no guilty knowledge.

This treaty, if it entered this field of stipulation at all, should have expressly provided that the governor-general should have power to remit all penalties and to pardon all offenders, if satisfied that the offenses were committed without guilty knowledge on the part of those found fishing in forbidden waters. There is no provision that those seizing a vessel shall be punished by damages if it shall appear that there was no probable cause for the seizure. There is not even a stipulation that the accused Americans shall be tried only in a court of record. The article, while ingeniously framed to appear to grant exemption to our fishermen, expressly delivers them and their property into the hands of a cruel code and an unrelenting enemy. No New Englander will be willing to impose this crime-creating article upon the New England fishermen.

6. Whenever the United States shall remove its duties on fish-oil, whale-oil, seal-oil, and all fish (except those preserved in oil) coming from Canada, then United States fishing vessels shall have licenses to enter Canadian ports in order to purchase provisions, bait, and other supplies and outfits, to transship their catch by any means, and to ship crews; and they may obtain bait by barter, but not supplies in that mode. (Article XV.)

The restricted commercial privileges thus to be paid for by free fish and fish-oils our vessels are now fairly entitled to, in return for similar privileges freely enjoyed by Canadian vessels in American ports; and our fishermen are specially secured their right to transship their catch by the nineteenth article of the treaty of Washington.

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This then is the arrangement, our confirmation of which is asked: The President dangerously enlarges the area of the waters from which our fishing vessels are to be excluded, or in which they are to be entrapped; in return, he obtains an agreement from England that such vessels while entering Canadian bays or harbors for repairs, shelter, wood, or water shall not be forced to make formal entry at customhouses if it is impracticable to do so; that when they are shipwrecked or in perils of ocean, they shall not be brutally treated; that when they are seized for alleged offenses justice shall not be oppressively perverted to forfeit them, and the President also obtains a promise for such vessels of limited commercial rights in Canadian ports, to be performed only when Congress will so alter our tariff laws as to admit Canadian fish and fish-oils free of duty. Is such a treaty beneficial and satisfactory to the fishing interests, and if not ought it to be forced upon them? This is perhaps a comparatively small question. Is such a treaty with all its circumstances one befitting our character as a free and independent nation? This is possibly a large question.

That the treaty is not beneficial to the fishermen does not need lengthy demonstration. It surrenders access to waters which are valuable to them; it belittles and humiliates and endangers them; it gives them barely exemption from barbarous treatment and only promises them important and reasonable commercial facilities on condition that their home market for fish shall be opened to the competition of their Canadian rivals. The voices of the fishermen are unanimously against this one-sided bargain. They believe they are entitled to full commercial rights, and they wish the Government to take a firm stand in demanding them.

They do not wish to put great white figures on their bows, to pay in any way for licenses to buy bait and supplies, or to carry on their business under a ban with fewer rights than other commercial ships after having been in the early days of the Republic specially favored of all vessels on the sea. But the fishermen long for peace, and it may be that if they realize that they are to be neglected or sacrificed by their Government and to receive only the rights of an inferior class, their courage will at last fail them, and they will give up their unequal struggle against Canada, Great Britain, and their own Government. Such is evidently the hope of the administration which has sacrificed their interests.

The treaty is dishonoring to the nation in many points: 1. It is a national dishonor, because it has been negotiated after a series of wrongful seizures and other outrages perpetrated upon American fishing vessels for the very purpose of forcing upon us a disadvantageous bargain, and yet it does not include any acknowledgment of the wrongs done or provide reparation therefor. The long catalogue of unjustifiable assaults upon American rights has been often proclaimed to the world. The oppressions seem to have been purposely intended to be offensive to American honor. The flag of the Union has been hauled down on the deck of an American vessel by a British captain for the apparent purpose of degradation and insult.

The intent of Canada's whole course has been apparent from the beginning, to harass us into a new treaty of some sort. Therefore, no treaty should have been made as long as the outrages were continued, and the very first article of a treaty should have provided apology and ample reparation for the wrongs done. And yet no allusion to these occurrences is made in the treaty or in the President's accompanying letter; and the claims for damages for seizures and wrongs which were once valiantly presented are now at last left unadjusted and unnoticed. No independent nation should stoop to make a treaty under such circumstances and with such an omission.

2. The treaty is a national dishonor, because by it we are forced by Canada towards alterations in our customs duties desired by her. She wishes reciprocity treaties opening our markets to her products. We have declined so to open them. She begins to harass us on subjects not connected with customs duties, and we yield and negotiate a treaty looking to changes in those duties. This is degradation. A reciprocity treaty may be honorably made, each side giving what are natural and customary equivalents. But a treaty by which we change our customs duties and Canada gives no natural equivalent which we can honorably accept as such is not friendly reciprocity, but on our part a pusillanimous surrender.

We claim full commercial rights for our vessels in Canadian ports without regard to customs duties imposed by either country. She offers to give to those ships limited commercial rights on condition that we will remove our duties on fish, and we are asked to make that bargain. We can not afford to do it. The equivalent for commercial rights for our vessels in British ports is the similar rights now accorded their vessels in our ports. Thus let both stand or fall. Commercial rights for our ships, which we persistently claim and to which we believe we are entitled in return for like privileges given British ships, we can not safely purchase by alterations in our tariff. If we do, what shall we ask of Great Britain as an equivalent for the commercial rightş of her vessels? It can not be too much emphasized that the whole controversy with Canada proceeds from her determination to reach our markets at reduced rates of duty or with duties removed. It is national injury, dishonor, and degradation to allow Canada, backed by Great Britain, to compel us in such ways as are proposed to alter our customs duties.

3. The treaty is a national dishonor because it is a part of a negotiation conducted by the representatives of England, not alone with the United States Government, but, avowedly, with one political party in this country.

When in 1885 Minister West first enticed Mr. Bayard into an unlawful agreement to extend the fishing articles of the treaty of Washington for six months and to ask Congress to submit the fishery question to another joint commission, and public outcry against this arrangement was made in behalf of the fishermen, Mr. West declared that of course a majority of the Republican Senate would assail any arrangement made by the Cleveland administration. Mr. Chamberlain has also been free in thinly veiled assaults upon the Republican party, and Mr. Bayard has followed in his wake, while Sir Charles Tupper discloses the whole purpose of the treaty negotiation to make an alliance with the Democratic party and through the agency of that party to secure the reduction or removal of customs duties and free trade for Canadian producers in our markets.

In his speech of April 10, 1888, Sir Charles Tupper first finds an identity of policy between Canada and the Democratic party of this country. He says:

Mr. Bayard states now and has stated throughout his great desire to have the freest commercial intercourse between us consistent with the position and interest of the two countries. Hesays if we want to see the policy of the Government of the United States you have it in the President's message to Congress; there is our policy. I say, sir, after studying the policy of the United States, of the Democratic party** ** after reading the President's

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message, after reading the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, after reading the speech of Mr. CARLISLE, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, on taking the chair, I have come to the conclusion that their policy is just as close to the policy of the government of Canada as any two things can be.

Next, Sir Charles proceeds to utter libels upon the Republican party, saying:

I need not tell the House that one of the advantages we enjoy under British institutions is that we are saved from the extreme and violent antagonisms of party that every fourth year the Presidential election brings about in the United States. Now, any man who knows anything of the politics of the United States knows that however good a measure is, however valuable, however much it commends itself to the judgment of every intelligent statesman in that country, it is a matter almost of honor on the part of the party in opposition to prevent the government of the day from doing anything that would give them any credit or strengthen their hands in the country; that on the eve of a Presidential election it is next to impossible to induce a Republican majority in the Senate to sanction anything that a Democratic administration has carried through, however valuable that may be.

In another breath, however, Sir Charles appeals to the Republican party after this foolish fashion:

Let the Senate of the United States to-morrow reject this treaty. I trust they will not do so. I have a hope that there is independent statesmanship enough in the great Republican party of the United States, who have the power at their disposal to-day in the United States Senate, to allow that sentiment of patriotism to overweigh the party advantages they might hope to obtain by preventing the present Administration from settling this vexed question.

Apparently despairing, however, of the success of his appeal, he scolds a little and predicts the triumph of the Democratic party in the next election, thus:

Let a fisherman complain to-morrow of our interpretation of the treaty, of the enforcement of our most extreme construction of the treaty, the answer to him is this: Nobody is to blame for the inconvenience you suffer except the Senate of the United States. Your President, the Executive of your country, the Democratic party from end to end of the United States, declared it was a fair settlement. They represent an undoubted majority, in my judgment, of the people of the United States to-day, and I believe they will represent it to

morrow.

Having continued his Democratic allies in power, he tells how the Democratic party will slowly and securely give free trade with Canada. This is the way:

As I have said, Mr. Bayard told us, the American plenipotentiaries told us, that there was but one way of obtaining what we wished. You want greater freedom of commercial intercourse. You want relaxation in our tariff arrangements with respect to natural products in which you are so rich and abundant. There is but one way to obtain it. Let us by common concession be able to meet on common ground and remove this irritating cause of difficulty between the two countries out of the way, and you will find that the policy of this Government, the policy of the President and of the House of Representatives, the policy of the great Democratic party of the United States, will at once take an onward march in the direction you propose and accomplish steadily that which you would desire in the only way by which it can ever be attained. Those were not empty words; they were the sober utterances of distinguished statesmen who pointed to the avowed policy of the Government of the United States as the best evidence of the sincerity of what they said.

What has happened already? Already we have action by the financial exponent of the Administration of the United States-I mean Mr. MILLS-the gentleman who in the United States Congress represents the Government of the day, and stands in the position most analogous in the United States to the finance minister in this House, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, who propounds the policy of the Administration in the House. How is he selected? The Democratic party sustaining the Government selects a man as Speaker of the House of Representatives who is in accord with the policy of the Administration, and Mr. CARLISLE, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, nominates the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means and all the members of the committee, and therefore the chairman of that committee occupies the position of representing the Government in bringing forward such bills as will represent the views and sentiments of the Democratic party of the United States supporting the Administration. What have we seen? The ink is barely dry upon this treaty before he, as the representative of the Government, and the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means brings forward a measure to do what? Why, to make free articles that Canada sends into the United States, and upon which last year $1,800,000 of duty was paid.

Having thus shown that the Democratic party and Mr. CARLISLE and Mr. MILLS propose to give Canada this $1,800,000 for this treaty he shows that this was his great object in the negotiation. He says:

We have pledged ourselves to the people to do everything that lay in our power to obtain a free market for the natural products of our country with the United States.

And, lastly, he says the Republican party is weak and that free trade is not far off. Mark the force of his words, friends of the Mills bill:

I say that under this bill which has been introduced, and which I believe will pass, for it does not require two-thirds of the Senate, where the Republican majority is only 1 in the whole House, to pass this bill, it requires a majority of 1 only, and I am very sanguine that this bill will pass during the present session. Modified it may be but I am inclined to think that the amendments will be still more in the interests of Canada than as the bill stands to-day. If this is the case I think we may congratulate ourselves upon securing the free admission of our lumber, upon which was paid during the last year no less than $1,315,450. On copper ore, made free by the Mills bill, we paid $96,945. On salt, $21,992 duty was paid. This is rendered free by the Mills bill.

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I am sorry to find, as I hoped would be the case from the first copy of the bill that came to me, that potatoes were not included amongst vegetables. I am sorry there is a doubt as to whether the term "vegetables not specially enumerated" will not exclude potatoes. In grappling with this policy of making the natural products of the two countries free, you do not expect any person who wants to carry a bill to put a heavier load upon his shoulders than he is able to carry, lest he may break down and do nothing. You expect him to take it in detail, and, as I believe, you will find the policy contained in this bill of making those natural products of Canada free carried out until you have perfect freedom of intercourse between the natural products of Canada and the United States of America. Of wool we sent last year 1,319,309 pounds of one kind, and a variety of other kinds, upon which a duty was paid to the extent of $183,852. Now, as I say, on articles of prime importance and interest to Canada the removal of duty by the Mills bill amounts to no less than $1,800,193.

No further evidence can be needed to prove the truth of the assertion that the agents of Great Britain have opened negotiations with the Democratic party to obtain for Canadians alterations in our customs laws and free access to our markets; and to give these is the whole purpose and object of this British-Democratic alliance. It is a most shameful procedure; discreditable to all parties, British and American, engaged in it. Never before in the history of this country did emissaries of foreign governments openly engage in negotiations and alliances with one political party. Citizen Genet attempted, not an appeal to one party, but what he called an appeal to the people, and Washington sent him back to France.

Mr. Van Buren, when Secretary of State, had in letters to Mr. McLane, minister to England, claimed credit with that power because the administration of Jackson entertained more friendly sentiments towards English colonial pretensions than the previous administration of Adams; and later, when Mr. Van Buren was himself nominated for minister to England he was rejected by the Senate, because, as Mr. Webster said, his expressions were derogatory to the national character, showing a disposition in the writer to persuade Lord Aberdeen that the English Government had an interest in maintaining in the United States the ascendency of the political party to which Mr. Van Buren belonged, thus establishing abroad a distinction between his country and his party.

Equally disgraced in this unprecedented business are Sir Charles Tupper, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and Mr. Secretary Bayard. The