The Canadian Fisheries Question.

Evening Star, Issue 7168, 23 March 1887, Page 3

The Canadian Fisheries Question.

The unfriendly feelings which have been increasing in intensity ever since the American smack David Adams was seized for a breach of the Canadian Fishery Laws last May, have now culminated in retaliatory measures lately under discussion in Congress. The main provisions of one of these Bills affirm that Canada has been guilty of interpreting its laws in a sense unfavorable to the United States ; therefore tho President is to be authorised not only to forbid Canadian—and, we presume Newfoundland vessels from entering American ports, but also to prohibit cars loaded with goods from crossing the Canadian frontier. In other words, a blockade is to be established against the Dominion. In the Senate, a Bill introduced by Mr Edmunds, of Vermont, has called forth very strong language. Mr Ingalls, of Kansas, is of opinion that the Bill does not go far enough. He would have redress, even in the shape of war. Mr Frye, of Maine, a State in which reside the fishermen most nearly concerned m the dispute, is eqtally truculent. The Canadians —that is, a handful of villagers on the shores of one of the Nova Scotian Sounds have been guilty of “ outrages and inhumanities that would disgrace the Fiji Islanders.” or, to put this hyperbole in a more prosaic form, they have once or twice mobbed some American fishermen who landed to dry and sell the fish which they, had caught within what the Canadians regard ns their own territorial limits. But

if anyone has maltreated the Americans the liw is open to them, and as the impartiality of the British Courts has always been a subject of intense admiration to the Americans, the offenders, they may be certain, will meet with the punishment tl pip illegality merits, That, however, is too tame a mode of redress for Mr frye, He warns England that she (s following a course warranted to bring her into trouble, and though Mr Edmunds v {ll not go so far as this, Senator Ingalls insists that it means war. The Bill eventually passed the Senate by 40 votes to 1, but the tone of the New York journals is very temperate, and generally speaking they ridicule the strong language used by some of the senators. The gravity that this question has assumed is engaging the active attention of the British and Canadian authorities, and is admitted to call for the appointment at the earliest possible date of an Imperial Commissioner to negotiate, with the assistance of the British Legation at Washington, a revision of the Treaty of 1818, which is specially affected by the recommendations made in the last report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the American House of Representatives. In regard to the Commissioner to be chosen, it is felt that a distinguished British negotiator of-experience, well informed concerning the United States and Canada, such as the Marquis of Lome, would best represent British interests, and at the same time make due allowance for American susceptibilities in this question.