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The American negotiators seem to have been of opinion, that in this treaty they had obtained an arrangement exceedingly advantageous to the American fishermen; and there seems also, to have been too much disposition to accept on trust, the assurance of those distinguished statesmen, that they had effected every thing desirable; for all which due credit was given to their abilities, to the sudden spasm of liberality, and to the standing fears of John Bull. But comparing the treaty with that of 1783, we cannot perceive in what there is anything to suggest gratulation to the fishermen of the United States. They should have known to be sure, if any, whether their rights and interests were sacrificed. But the truth is this-the fishermen, the only class sufficiently interested, directly, to examine the matter, were contented with the fact, that they were to be allowed quietly to fish in places from which they had of late been driven, and for visiting which they had in some cases lost their vessels; and were disposed to consider this an important point gained, without stopping to reflect that this was but at best, a second gift of what had been once given and never reclaimed, and that Great Britain had been hired to abstain from an act of nullification-nullification of contract under her own bond and seal, which she could neither have justified nor maintained in the face of the world. The Commissioners could not claim, certainly, that the new treaty, in reality, added anything to the surface of waters we were entitled to use before; the only gain, then, they must have supposed to be in a more explict definition of the respective localities to be visited and to be free from the intrusion of the Americans, obviating so the chances of misapprehension and collision. We consider the treaty poorly justified in any light; and despite the statesmanship of the two eminent men responsible for its paternity, regard it as one of the worst abortions of American diplomacy. The first grand error is, the surrender of the great principle by which our rights in the fisheries had been made permanent and invulnerable. The right had originally been claimed as part and substance of our independence, and refusing to receive an acknowledgement of independence detached from the questioned right, the grant of both placed them both on the same footing, forever beyond the control of England. this broad and immovable basis, the Commissioners of 1815 presented the right, when the British envoys claimed that the war had made void former treaty concessions; and the recession of the latter from their assumption, was an acknowledgement of the validity of the claim in its whole form and extent. Thus, except by actual conquest or purchase, our rights in the fisheries were forever placed beyond limitation. We could gain additional privileges, but could lose none-could have no modification of what we possessed. But when Messrs. Gallatin and Rush agreed to subject our rights to a re-modification—to yield points, and receive equivalents; or even if it were no more than to receive from England a new definition of our title, the whole grand conservator of our right was destroyed. The contract of 1818, unlike that of 1783, could be nullified. War, every real or pretended breach of faith on the part of the United States, in fact the inclination of the British government, were either of them sufficient, at any time, to set it aside. If the treaty were declared void, of course, all the (so considered) privileges given by it, were reclaimed by England; and as the least evil, the way was open for other conventions, no matter of how peaceful origin, which might arise from the demand of England herself, and in which, according to her power and covetousness, and our own circumstances, she might gradually force other sacrifices, until we had purchased her regard to her own

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faith, by tossing over the last bit of our mutilated right. Thus cheaply was the indestructible basis of two treaties sold out.

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Next, John Bull takes care, in redescribing our privileges, to lop away certain portions, sundry odd corners, and ungraceful appendages. He probably argued, and the American Commissioners either thought so too, or conceiving a clear definition to be worth a substantial consideration, deemed a fair attorney fee quite due Mr. Bull's luminous expose of American rights, that it would much improve the form of the American district, to amputate these ugly-shaped limbs. Observe the difference between our relation's processes of defining and RE-defining. The treaty of 1783 allows the Americans to fish in, beside sundry named places, "all other places in the sea, where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish; and beside the whole coast of Newfoundland, "on the coast, bays, and creeks of all other of his Britannic Majesty's dominions in America." They are allowed to "dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador." That is the definition exacted by John Adams and his associates, and while no one could at all complain that it was not sufficiently broad and comprehensive. we do not see that language could well be more clear and distinct. The re-definition, is in this manner of curtailment; that the Americans are to have the right to take fish on a part of the southern coast of Newfoundland, and on a part of the coast of Labrador, and also to take and cure fish in the unsettled bays, creeks, or harbors of the parts described. Of all other places, the United States give up all right ever claimed or enjoyed to take or cure fish within three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors, of his Britannic Majesty in America. What was thus given up, paid away for a clear definition, and a promise to stop breaking an old promise, embraced all the "coasts, bays, creeks, and harbors," of the province of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, of the islands of Cape Breton, St. Johns, Anticosti, and of the numerous other islands of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Northern side of Newfoundland, &c., &c. For this consideration, together with that of the basis of our title to all the rest, Mr. Bull put his second promise on the dishonored back of the first; in other words, having become veraciously insolvent, he compromised with his creditor, and gave a per centage of fresh promise in lieu of the entire faith just broken. Jonathan accepts the fractional performance of the contract, and acknowledges Mr. Bull out of his debt, and free to go into business again.

But this is not all. Mr. Bull has put into the protocol, a slight proviso, seemingly of little moment, and innocent of all look of design, which may acquire some important signification. All that the Americans are to enjoy, in the waters specified, is to be enjoyed "however without prejudice to any of the exclusive rights of the Hudson Bay Company." What protection does the great Hudson Bay Company need against the American fishermen ? Or, at any rate, what more protection did they need in 1818, than in 1783, when no such protective feature was inserted in the treaty? Had the fishermen encroached on them between the two periods, so much affecting their income, and endangering their existence, as to require that the two governments should put this double wall of partition between assailant and assailed? But what was the Hudson Bay Company? Was it any known, fixed, recognized object, of palpable outline, and assigned location? No-but a thing as regarded us, most dimensively indefinite-a radical ambiguity, snugly interpolated in this document of definition, and liable, at some future occasion,

to expand into a big Unfixity, enveloping in a baffling fog, all the clear descriptions among which it was lodged. No doubt the Hudson Bay Company had rights, and that these rights were as properly objects of government care, to England, as those of other associations, and of individuals less able to defend them. But we had engaged to respect an unfinished charter-a progressive catalogue of privileges, of which the whole creative power was in the hands of England! It was not their present only, but their future right, that our Commissioners guarantied; and that future would be, what England chose to shape it. Nothing in the name or proposed objects of the company limited it to any particular location or business, and should England at any time have transferred to it, her right in the Fisheries, the rights of our citizens held" in common with British subjects," must have been sacrificed to the "exclusive" privilege of the Hudson Bay Company.

Is all this amount of sacrifice offset by nothing in the nature of gain? There is, indeed, one single instance of a seeming concession from the party which is otherwise exclusively the receiver. And what is this new privilege whose transfer is to compensate for the surrender of rights, alike invaluable and inpregnable? An appearance only !—the transfer under covenant seal and interchanged signature of a Shadow! A Privilege, not worth the paper on which it is written. We are allowed, in good stiff diplomatic terms, to cure fish on sundry unsettled parts of the Island of Newfoundland; the same privilege having before existed in regard to the rest of the coasts, and having never been used. Were our Commissioners duped? Did they not know the practical value of the pretended concession? If they did not, it is a lamentable instance of the ignorance of the interests of even their own country, under which the best statesmen may suffer. But the section of cross-conveyance is well adjusted to the other parts of the treaty, among which it rests without in the least disturbing the harmony of the per as a document of unmixed capitulation. Indeed this remarkable treaty as a whole, is the finest piece of dove-tailed ingenuity, that European diplomacy has ever executed for the security of American rights. Surely if there was ever need of a "protective principle" to encourage the development of native skill, it was urgently demanded in behalf of American diplomacy, at the time Messrs. Gallatin and Rush repaired to the Convention of 1818. Unhappily the subject had been overlooked in the tariffs enacted previously to that time.*

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Another occasion for expressing our thanks to English liberality occurred in 1845, when our fishermen were admitted into the Bay of Fundy. This astonishing instance of magnanimity to a rival, called forth the kindliest smiles of acknowledgment from the American press, generally; and some of our politicians, including the most rabid haters of Britain, were fraternally animated by the belief that, by such an act, John Bull had locked and double-bolted the gates of Janus, just threatened to swing open. The actual reason for self-gratulation and for thanks, was of much the same char

A writer in the Journal of Commerce recently suggested that as a compensation for farther modifications of our commercial system in favor of England, she might be induced to grant us the privilege of drying fish on the coasts of her American possessions! This is a proposition to re-enact the Convention of 1818-we are to pay England to re-grant or re-define privileges we already have! But it luckily happens that the subtracting element, so material a part of England's Re-defining system, could not materially injure us, if confined to this matter alone, as the privilege possessed and re-asked, is one of no value,-the reason being, simply, that if our fishermen were to stop to cure their fish on the British American coasts, the delay would occasion more expense than to bring them home.

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acter, but still less in degree than in the case of the clear definitions of 1818. The grant of 1818 existed in a previous treaty-that of 1845 was embodied in two treaties then on record, and neither set aside. The right to fish in the Bay of Fundy, notwithstanding it was never improved or insisted upon, was as clearly given in the treaty of 1818, as in that of 1783. The palpable meaning of the clause giving up, as to other places than those named, all right before claimed or enjoyed, "to take or cure fish on or w hin three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors" of the British possessions, is, that the Americans shall not fish within three miles of any shore in these parts; the words bay, creek, or harbor, being substi tuted for the inland shores of the same, which are not confounded with the word coasts, meaning the shore of the sea. In a bay of over six miles in width the Americans had still as much right to fish, as in any other part of the sea; and if, by a monstrously perverted understanding of the word "bay," the Americans were to be excluded from coming within three miles of the mouth or outlet of any arm of the sea, then they could be excluded from any body of water, however large, lying partially within the embrace. of the land. If the Americans could rightfully be excluded, under the treaty of 1818, from the Bay of Fundy, they could with the same justice and propriety be driven from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the grant of a few coasts, bays, creeks, &c., on one or two of its sides, giving them no permission to range the whole of that land-begirted sea. In accepting the bounty of 1845 as a real transfer of privilege, we acknowledged as valid a perverted construction of the clear definitions of 1818, and gave up our just right in whatever other bays or harbors this perverted construction may have been applied to.

Certainly our diplomatic efforts connected with the Fisheries, since the war of 1812, have been singularly unfortunate. Had our commercial interest, generally, been no better taken care of, it would have illy withstood the competition of the powerful rival interests of Britain and France. Every attempt to better our privileges has resulted in a sacrifice of a part of them. Once we have lost a moiety as the price of a clear definition, and again we have lost another part in a supposed enlargement of them. A few more conventions, protocols, and concessions like those of 1818 and 1845, will effectually adjust all points of difference, by leaving us nothing needing protection, or requiring description.

Art. II. PROTECTION vs. FREE-TRADE.

THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN THE RELATIONS OF CAPITAL AND LABOR.

FREEMAN HUNT, Esq., Conductor of the Merchants' Magazine, etc.

The papers on both sides, in the discussion between R. S. and myself have been printed under the running title "PROTECTION VS. FREE TRADE." Such is not, however, the issue that has been made on my part. I undertook, indeed, to show that, for the solution of this question, it was indispensable to ascertain whether Carey, or Malthus and Ricardo are correct in their opposing views, as to the course of cultivation of the earth; and to determine whether it be true that population increases, or tends to increase, faster than the means of subsistence, as Malthus believes, or whether increasing density of population brings with it facilities for obtaining food, or increasing in a more rapid ratio than the consumers, according to Carey. For the purpose of proving this I was obliged to sketch the opposing theories upon which the school of protection-which follows Adam Smith in regarding domestic commerce as the primary interest of a nation-and the Manchester school-which, following the modern English economists, is mainly solicitous to encourage foreign trade-respectively base themselves. I am quite aware that I did not, as I could not do this without exposing my own opinions. But all this is merely introductory to a discussion of the protective policy, which I have, it is true, signified a readiness to enter upon, if invited, but have not commenced. This much it seems proper to premise lest your readers should infer that I conceive myself to be doing what I have not as yet undertaken.

Several of the principles which I stated are so repugnant to the notions of R. S. that he could hardly treat them as entitled to a decent show of consideration. I attempted therefore, to produce evidence in support of them, not in "statistics for very short periods," but in statistics for the respectable periods of fifty, and a hundred and fifty years, derived from the most eminent free-trade authorities of Great Britain and France. When I dealt with statistics for the short period of ten years, it was because they were selected and quoted by R. S. himself. These I think show that with increasing capital production is so much cheapened in its labor cost, that while wages and profits both rise commodities fall in their money price.

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In respect to manufactured fabrics, the Lowell statistics to which we were referred by R. S., furnished the means of experiencing how it comes that a piece of cotton cloth can be sold for a less sum of money than ten years before, yet that less money pays higher cash wages to labor, and higher profits to capital. Prof. Gordon, of the University of Glasgow, says, in the Art Journal, for October, " An experienced operative of the manufacturing districts working the modern looms, produces 26 pieces of printing cloth, 25 inches wide, 29 yards long and 11 picks per inch in a week of sixty hours. The cost of weaving each piece is 51d.-less than 6d. If the same cloth were woven on the old loom, one operative would produce only four pieces, and at a cost of 2s. 9d. each; or the weaver's wages in 1800 were as much as the entire value of the cloth in the Manchester market at present."

According to this statement the entire cost of the wages paid in 1800 has disappeared from the cloth described, in 1850. But wages have not been reduced to nothing. On the contrary, they are higher, estimated in money and by the hour, and still higher estimated in cotton cloth. Mr. Porter, in his Pro

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