ties shall give security that the amount to be paid to them shall be refunded if the bills are recovered, and is to be refunded if the safe is recovered or brought to land in any way. The committee consider that these bills are irrecoverably lost of destroyed.

I had in my possession at the last session, but they have been mislaid during the recess, letters from the president and principal officers of several banks in the eastern cities, some three or four, I think three in Boston and one in New York, who state that it is their custom, three of them say, on proof of the destruction of their bills, to refund the amount to those who were their holders. The fourth says it is the custom on proof of loss without destruction. Considering this to be a clear case of destruction, or what is equivalent to destruction, an irrecoverable loss, fortified by these precedents of the common usage of our banking institutions throughout the country, and these being mere circulating bills, notes that go from hand to hand, the United States having received value for them, and as without the production of full proof of the loss of the bills the Government cannot be called on to refund them, the committee thought it was a clear case of justice and right, and that the relief ought to be accorded.

Mr. DAVIS. There are some cases somewhat similar to this before the Committee on Claims, of which I am a member, and I see that this morning another claim of the same character has been referred to the same committee. It is perfectly plain that these cases are going to multiply very greatly in number and amount. Where it is clearly and satisfactorily established that bills have been destroyed, I suppose some such measure as this would be not unjust or improper. With a view to that point, I will ask for the reading of the report in this case.

The VICE PRESIDENT. It will be read, if there be no objection.

The Secretary read, as follows:

The Committee on Finance, to whom was referred the petition of the Adams Express Company for the passage of an act authorizing the issue to them of new Treasury notes in the place of others alleged to have been destroyed while in their custody, respectfully report:

That from the proofs submitted to them it satisfactorily appears that several packages addressed to various parties at New Orleans, and containing in the aggregate $22,080 in legal tender Treasury notes, were, by the said company, together with various other packages, placed in an iron safe, which was scaled and inclosed in an iron-strapped wooden box and shipped at New York on board the steamer Bio Bio, consigned to the agent of the company at New OrJeans. The steamer left New York on the 10th of March, 1863, stopped at Havana, where the said box and safe were removed from between decks to the lower hold, and arrived at the levee at New Orleans during the night of the 21st of the same month, and early on the next morning was discovered to be on fire. Every effort was made to extinguish it, but without success, until, in consequence of the burning of her hawsers, the steamer slid from the levee and sank beneath the surface of the water. Divers were speedily employed, and the use of diving bells and other wrecking appliances resorted to and continued for six or eight weeks, but without other result than the recovery of a few cases of merchandise and some of the machinery and equipments of the vessel. It seems that there is a strong eddy at the place where the steamer sunk, and that the wreck was soon buried in sand or alluvion, rendering the further efforts of the divers unavailing, and the recovery of the safe and contents apparently impossible.

From the facts stated, the Treasury notes in question having now been under water more than fourteen months, the committee believe that the destruction of the said notes is complete, even if the safe and contents are not absolutely irrecoverable. They therefore recommend the passage of the accompanying bill.

Mr. POMEROY. I do not rise for the sake of objecting particularly to this bill at this time if the Senate are prepared to enter upon this question of paying claims of this character. The Committee on Claims have had a very large amount of this class of cases referred to them, and I had supposed that this case was there. I have had my attention called to it a number of times. We have not yet felt called upon to present to the Senate cases of this kind. There was a paymaster on this very steamer that wants relief, who lost his money. This is a relief bill for the Adams Express Company. There are piles of such bills now before the various committees of this body; and if this is to be established as a precedent to pass all the balance of them I shall oppose it; that is, I shall be opposed to entering upon that work at this time. I do not think we are prepared for it; and I think the Adams Express Company are no greater sufferers than individuals who have lost a vast amount in the same way. I do not know why we should take this

case, in the interest, as it is, of a very large and wealthy corporation, and pass a bill for their relief, while paymasters and commissaries, private individuals, have, I think I may be safe in saying, millions of claims of this very character presented before this Senate. Unless the chairman of the Committee on Claims, who has had this question particularly in charge, wishes to enter upon the payment of this class of claims now, I shall ask for its postponement.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. President

Mr. SHERMAN. If my friend from Kentucky will allow me I will submit a motion that this bill be committed to the Committee on Claims. As they have similar claims before them I think that probably would be the best disposition of it. I move, therefore, that it be referred to the Committee on Claims.

Mr. DAVIS. I was going to make that motion myself.

The motion was agreed to.

RECIPROCITY TREATY.

Mr. SUMNER. I move that the Senate now proceed with the consideration of the joint resolution relating to the reciprocity treaty.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate resumed the consideration of the joint resolution (H. R. No. 56) authorizing the President of the United States to give to the Government of Great Britain the notice required for the termination of the reciprocity treaty of the 5th of June, A. D. 1854, the pending question being on the passage of the joint resolution.

Mr. HALE. Mr. President, I sometime ago, when this resolution was under consideration in the Senate, moved that it be postponed until the 6th of January, and the Senate were courteous enough to postpone it under the impression, as it seemed to be from the talk, that I desired to address the Senate upon it; but I had no such desire in particular. I looked upon the measure as one that would be highly disastrous to the best interests of the country. I believed that it resulted not from any broad views of its operation, for I am compelled to say-I regret to say it, but I say it with all courtesy to the Senate-that it seemed to me there was a very great lack of information on the subject, and which the Senate ought to have before they acted upon it; and, to be perfectly candid, I must say that it appeared to my mind the Senate were about to rush upon a course of legislation stimulated by passion and resentment at some fancied wrong that this country was suffering under from the action of these colonial gov

ernments.

I was one of those who at the time this treaty was adopted looked upon it with great favor. 1 looked upon it as a mark and a step in the right direction. I looked upon it as one of those healthful indications of the application of Christian principle to the legislation and diplomacy of nations. I believed that it was an onward path in the march of national morals indicative of a better and a purer and a higher state of things than that which had heretofore prevailed. I believed so then, and I believe so now; and to my mind this proposition to abrogate the reciprocity treaty is a step back from the advancing civilization of the present age to the dark ages of restriction which so long hampered the progress of nations.

is not the ground. The Committee on Commerce have not been heard from. The Committee on Finance have not been heard from. It comes from the Committee on Foreign Relations; and therefore I think it may be considered as coming not from the commercial nor from the financial interests, nor those who represent those interests.

I have been a little astonished also that in this great measure, in this, to my mind, retrograde movement in the national legislation, we should have been called upon to take so momentous and to my mind so disastrous a step without any report even from the Committee on Foreign Relations, setting forth the reasons why it has been recommended at this time. I know that an attempt has been made to kill this treaty by calling it bad names. Even the candid and ingenuous Senator from Massachusetts speaks of it not as "the reciprocity treaty," but as "the so-called reciprocity treaty." It has been said that it operates all one way; that it is one-sided.

I am reminded by that of a similar argument that was used to me some twenty years ago, when I first had the honor of a seat in Congress. I boarded in a mess where there were two or three gentlemen from the State of South Carolina. In looking over the census, I remarked that from 1820 to 1830, I think it was-or it may possibly have been the next decade, from 1839 to 1840while the country had wonderfully progressed, the singular fact appeared that the city of Charleston, in South Carolina, had not only made no comparative increase, but had made an actual decrease; so that at the end of those ten years she was less in population than she had been ten years before. I confess the matter struck me as singular, and I called the attention of the gentleman representing South Carolina who boarded with me to it, and asked him what it meant. He looked at me as if he considered me exceedingly green to ask such a question, and replied at once promptly, "It is the tariff; the tariff does it." I waited a moment, and then inquired, "What particular feature of the tariff is it that has operated so disastrously upon Charleston, South Carolina?" "Well," he replied, "perhaps it would be difficult to put your finger upon the precise feature, but it is the general operation of the whole thing, raising the price of everything that we have to buy and lowering that of everything we have to sell." [Laughter.] Quite as indefinite and quite as unsatisfactory are the reasons assigned by those who urge the abrogation of this treaty.

I have endeavored to look into this subject a little, and but a very little, for I do not represent a great commercial community. I do not represent the city of Boston, whose life is commerce. I do not represent the Empire City, whose daily food and daily breath is commerce. But, sir, I have an interest in common with all the members upon this floor in everything that relates to the welfare of my country, and what relates to the welfare of any part of it, Boston, New York, or any other place, relates to me; and I have taken the trouble of looking somewhat at the operation of this treaty in gross. It may be possible, and I have no doubt that it is so, that some special pleader may put his hand upon some particular article and show that since the adoption of the reciprocity treaty there has been less of it exported from the United States to the British provinces than there was before the adoption of the reciprocity treaty. But, sir, what do the official tables furnished by the Secretary of the Treasury show in relation to the practical operation of this

I am surprised at the haste with which this proposition is now urged. The nation is about to retrace its well-considered steps from a position which it took so long ago; and at whose instance? Not at the instance of the Committee on Com-treaty? I will read from a letter of the Secretary merce, although the commercial interests are those that are to be most vastly affected by it. Not at the suggestion of the Committee on Finance, from which it should have appropriately been advised if the real reason for this measure was the one that was hinted at by the honorable Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. SUMNER,] that the treaty ought to be abrogated at a time like this when we were looking about us to find subjects of taxation to replenish and to aid our exhausted Treasury. If that was the ground on which this resolution was placed, I would not say a word against it. If it had originated from a purpose and a desire to aid the national Treasury in this hour of the country's peril, to supply men or money for the gigantic effort which we are now making for national existence and national honor, I never would have said one word or one syllable against it. But that

of the Treasury communicated to the House of Representatives February 21, 1864, in answer to a resolution of the House of December previous. It will be recollected that this treaty was adopted in 1854. I have here, in this letter of the Secretary, a statement of the value of the imports into Canada. This table relates simply to the imports into Canada from the United States for thirteen years, from 1850 to 1862 inclusive, with the amounts of duties paid. For instance: in 1850 the total imports into Canada from the United States were $6,594,860, and the amount of duties paid was $1,069,814. They went on gradually increasing, sometimes from year to year varying a little; but in 1855, the next year after the ratification of this treaty, our exports to Canada alone went up to $20,828,676, they being but $15,533,098 the year before; the next year they were $22,704,509, and

their own honor and the most friendly purpose to serve us has been done, and is being done at this moment. If we abrogate this treaty at this time, while those who are favorably disposed to this country are endeavoring to do all their duty and their whole duty to us in this hour, in what condition shall we place them? Sir, I will tell you just exactly what we shall do: we shall strengthen the hands of the rebels and weaken the hands of our own friends.

I think it is a tolerably well settled fact that Canada and the United States will continue for some time, to say the least, to be contiguous and conterminous in territory, and that no action of the Senate can by any means alter that. I take it that the relative relation on the face of the globe of Halifax and Boston will remain very much as it is now for some time to come. The question is, how shall we conduct ourselves in regard to these neighbors, and what is our interest?

Among the reasons that were suggested for abrogating this treaty, or among the consequences of it, it was suggested by one member of the Senate, I believe the honorable Senator from Iowa, [Mr. GRIMES,] that it would reduce the great interests of that country, their railroads, &c., to a state of bankruptcy if not of pauperism. Suppose it would; suppose that that suggestion emanated from the profoundest political wisdom, and was eminently true, is it our interest to reduce our neighbors to poverty and to bankruptcy, or is it the interest of this country, a commercial country, that the Canadas and our neighbors, as long as they are our neighbors, shall be prosperous, and eminently prosperous, if they do not by that prosperity impoverish us? What was the great argument with which Henry Ward Beecher electrified England in his visit to Great Britain? He asked them, "What is your interest? To have the country filled up with slaves that buy no cloth, no luxuries, or to have it filled up with an industrious and enterprising free population, who, for their own use and their own interests, will make a market for your productions and your manufactures?" The argument had infinite force in it; and if it had force when it applied to the slave States in their relations to the rest of the world, does it not eminently have force when applied to our colonial neighbors? Is it for our interest that they should be rich, prosperous, wealthy, and enterprising, enabled to buy of our manufactures, and go on as they have, in the short space of thirteen years quadrupling what they buy of us, or to reduce them to bankruptcy and poverty? In doing that we injure ourselves quite as much as we injure them.

These are some of the reasons which induce me to oppose the abrogation of this treaty; but I see that it is a foregone conclusion. I think that gentlemen take counsel of their passion rather than of those broad reasons which relate to the present and the progressive welfare of the country. Our welfare and our progress is bound up with that of the rest of the world, and it is more so with those neighbors that are near and proximate than those who are far off. I believe that this treaty, as has been shown by the tables which have been exhibited, has been eminently wise and salutary in its effect; that under it commerce has grown up and prospered as it has in no other country under heaven. Notwithstanding the vast increase of free goods which we have sent to Canada and Canada to us, the amount of duty-paying goods has increased at the same time; so that all these millions are absolutely added to the commerce of the country by the operation of this reciprocity treaty.

I hope, sir, that until some gentleman can point out some great injury that has been wrought, or has been threatened, or is in store for us, the Senate will pause before passing the measure before it. I hope, at least, that it will not be rushed through at this time. I hope that the Senate will wait until they can hear from the city of New York, which pays so very large a proportion of the revenue collected from customs, and her merchants who feel a lively and vital interest in this matter, and who are now taking counsel upon it, and will perhaps at a very early day be prepared to suggest their views to the Senate upon it.

As I said at the commencement, I have not given this subject an elaborate examination. When it came up it was not my purpose to do it. The most that I wanted was delay that those who

were better able to present their views on the subject than I was might have an opportunity to be heard; and I am of the same opinion now. I think that they should be heard upon it. There certainly can be no reason for this haste. If the notice is given, I believe a year must elapse before it will have its effect, and notwithstanding we give the notice the treaty will exist for a year. Does anybody suppose that the abrogation of this treaty in this manner will have a tendency to make these people listen favorably to any suggestion of ours for another or a new treaty? 1 believe not. The Committee on Commerce of the House of Representatives not long ago made a report on the subject, in which they made a suggestion which I think is an eminently wise one, and one which I think should be listened to at the present time. I desire to read an extract from the report made in the House of Representatives on this subject. The committee say:

"The Committee on Commerce believe with the Legislature of New York that free commercial intercourse between the United States and the British North American provinces and possessions, developing the natural geographical and other advantages of caeli for the good of all, is conducive to the present interests of each, and is the proper basis of our intercourse for all time to come,' and that such measures should be adopted as will fully carry into effect the principles announced by the British minister at Washington in 1859, for the confirmation and expansion of free commercial relations between the United States and the British provinces,' and to regulate the commerce and navigation between her Majesty's possessions in North America and the United States in such manner as to render the same reciprocally beneficial and satisfactory,' as was intended and expressed by the treaty made between the United States and Great Britain, and commonly known as the reciprocity treaty.'

"The Committee on Commerce would therefore recommend that three commissioners be appointed by the President of the United States to confer with persons duly authorized by Great Britain in that behalf, with a view to enlarging the basis of the former treaty, and for the removal of existing difficulties,"

2. Next comes the navigation of the St. Lawrence. But this plausible concession has proved to be little more than a name. It appears that during the first six years of the treaty only forty American vessels, containing 12,550 tons, passed seaward through the St. Lawrence, and during the same time only nineteen vessels, containing 5,446 tons, returned by the same open highway! These are very petty amounts when we consider the value of the commerce on the lakes, which, in 1856, was $587,197,320, or when we consider the carrying trade between the United States and the British provinces. Take the years 1857-62, and we shall find that during this period the shipping of the United States which cleared for the British provinces was 10,707,329 tons, and the foreign shipping which cleared during this same period was 7,391,399 tons, while the shipping of the United States which entered at our custom-house from the British provinces was 10,056,183 tons, and the foreign shipping which entered was 6,453,520 tons. I mention these things by way of contrast. In comparison with these grand movements of value the business which we have been able to do on the St. Lawrence seems to be trivial. It need not be considered as an element in the present discussion.

3. The treaty may be seen next in its bearings on the commerce between the two countries. This has increased immensely; but it is difficult to say how much of this increase is due to the treaty and how much is due to the natural growth of population, and the facilities of transportation in both countries. If it could be traced exclusively or in any large measure to the treaty, it would be an element not to be disregarded. But it does not follow from the occurrence of this increase after the treaty that it was on account of the treaty. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is too loose a rule for our Government on the present occasion.

The census of the United States and of the British provinces will show an increase of popu

mining the origin of this increase of commerce.

Mr. SUMNER. The reciprocity treaty has a beautiful name. It suggests at once exchange, equality, equity; and it is because it was supposed to advance these ideas practically that this treaty was originally accepted by the people of the United States. If, however, it shall appear that while organizing an exchange it forgets equality and equity in any essential respect, then must a modification be made in conformity with just principles.

I mean to be brief, but I hope, though brief, to make the proper conclusion apparent. It is a question for reason and not for passion or sentiment, and in this spirit I enter upon the discussion.

The treaty may be seen under four different heads, as it concerns, first, the fisheries; second, the navigation of the St. Lawrence; third, the commerce between the United States and the British provinces, and fourth, the revenue of the United States.

1. The fisheries have been a source of anxiety throughout our history, even from the beginning, and for several years previous to the reciprocity treaty they had been the occasion of mutual irrítation, verging at times on positive outbreak. The treaty was followed by entire tranquillity, which has not been for a moment disturbed. This is a plain advantage which cannot be denied. But so far as I have been able to examine official returns, I do not find any further evidence showing the value of the treaty in this connection, while opinions, even among those most interested in the fisheries, are divided. There are partisans for it in Gloucester, and partisans against it in Maine.

If the treaty related exclusively to the fisheries, I should not be willing to touch it. But the practical question is, whether the seeming advantage in this respect is sufficient to counterbalance the disadvantage in other respects.

There are also the railroads furnishing prompt and constant means of intercommunication which have come into successful operation only since the treaty. It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence they have exercised in quickening and extending commerce. I cannot doubt that the railroad system of the two countries has been in itself a reciprocity treaty, more comprehensive and equal than any written on parchment.

The extent of trade before and after the treaty may be seen in a few figures.

In the three years immediately preceding the treaty the total exports to Canada and the other British provinces were $48,216,518, and the total imports were $22,588,577; being of exports to imports in the proportion of one hundred to forty-six.

In the ten years of the treaty the total exports to Canada and the other British provinces were $256,350,931. The total imports were $200,399,786. According to these amounts the exports were in the proportion of one hundred to seventy-eight. If we take Canada alone we shall find the change in this proportion greater still. The total exports to Canada in the three years immediately preceding the treaty were $31,846,865, and the total imports were $16,589,624; being in the proportion of one hundred to fifty-two; while the total exports to Canada alone during the ten years of the treaty were $170,371,911, and the total imports were $161,474,349, being in the proportion of one hundred to ninety-four.

I present these tables simply to lay before you the extent and nature of the change in the commerce between the two countries. But I forbear embarking on the much-debated inquiry as to the effect of a difference between the amount of exports and of imports, involving as it does the whole perilous question of the balance of trade. In the view which I take on the present occasion, it is not necessary to consider it. The reciprocity treaty cannot be maintained or overturned on any contested principle of political economy.

4. I come, in the last place, to the influence of the treaty on the revenue of our country; and here the custom-house is our principal witness. The means of determining this question will be found in the authentic tables which have been published from time to time in reports of the Treasury, and especially in the report made to Congress at this session, which I have in any hand.

Looking at these tables we find certain unanswerable points. I begin with an estimate founded on the trade before the treaty. From this it appears that, if no treaty had been made, and the trade had increased in the same ratio as before the treaty, Canada would have paid to the United States in the ten years of the treaty at least $16,373,880, from which she has been relieved. This sum is actually lost to the United States. In return Canada has given up $2,650,890, being the amount it would have collected, if no treaty had been made. Here is a vast disproportion, to the detriment of the United States.

Here is another illustration, derived from the tables. During the ten years of the treaty the United States have actually paid in duties to Canada alone $16,802,962, while during this same period Canada has paid in duties to the United States the very moderate sum of $930,447. Here again is a vast disproportion, to the detriment of the United States.

The same inequality may be seen in another way. During the ten years of the treaty dutiable products of the United States have entered Canada and the other provinces to the amount of $83,347,019, while during this same period dutiable products of Canada and the other provinces have entered the United States only to the amount of $7,750,482. During this same period free products of the United States have entered Canada and the other provinces to the amount of $118,853,972, while free products of Canada and the other provinces have entered the United States to the amount of $178,500,184. Here again is a vast disproportion, to the detriment of the United States.

Add to these various results the statement in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, which has been just laid on our tables, in the following words:

"The treaty has released from duty a total sum of $42,333,257 in value of goods of Canada more than of goods the produce of the United States."-Foreign and Domestic Commerce, 1864, page 93.

This conclusion is in substantial harmony with that which I had reached from an independent

examination of the tables.

From these various illustrations it is clear that the revenue of the United States has suffered by the treaty in question, and that in this important particular its advantages have not been shared equally by the two countries. Here, at least, it loses all title to its name.

But the onerous character of this treaty has become manifest in other forms since the adoption of our system of internal revenue. I need not remind the Senate of the extent to which we have gone in seeking out objects of excise, and now there are various propositions still pending in the same direction, seeking new objects; but it is notorious that such taxation is always graduated with reference to the tariff on the same objects when imported from abroad. But here the reciprocity treaty steps forward with its imperative veto. Thus, for instance, the lumber of our country is left free from excise, though I am assured that it might well bear it, simply because no countervailing tax can be imposed upon lumber from the British provinces. Had a tax of five per cent. been imposed upon the lumber of our country, I am assured from those familiar with the subject that we should have received at least $5,000,000; all of which is lost to our annual revenue. But this is only a single illustration.

There are other ways in which the treaty and our excise system come into conflict. Practical difficulties, I am assured, have already occurred in the bureau of internal revenue. But this conflict will be seen in the extent to which the business of the country, and even its agriculture is taxed now The farmer works now with taxed tools. These considerations, with the increased value of labor among us, must give new advantages to the productive interests of Canada as compared with ours, and tend still further to the unequal operation of the treaty.

Mr. President, such is the result of a candid inquiry into the operation of this treaty, as it concerns the fisheries, the navigation of the St. Lawrence, the commerce of the two countries, and the revenue of the United States. I have kept nothing back favorable to the treaty that could be adequately stated in the brief space which I have allowed myself, nor have I exaggerated its unequal operation.

And now the question is, shall this condition of things be reconsidered? The treaty itself, as if anticipating this exigency, furnishes the opportunity by expressly providing for its termination at the expiration of ten years on notice of one year from either party. Great Britain is free to give this notice, so are the United States. Considering the present state of the country, it would seem to be improvident not to give the notice. We must husband our resources; nor can a foreign Government justly expect us to continue a treaty which is a drain upon our revenue. every direction we are now turning for subjects of taxation. Our own people are contributing in every way largely. Commerce, manufactures in every form, are obliged to come to the assistance of the country. I know no reason why the large amounts enfranchised by this treaty should enjoy the immunity which has been thus far conceded to them. An inequality which in ordinary times would have escaped observation becomes too apparent in the blaze of present responsibili

ties.

In

Something has been said about accompanying the proposed notice with instructions to negotiate a new treaty. This is entirely unnecessary. A new treaty may not be advisable. It is possible that the whole matter may be settled by Congress under general laws. In all events, there is a full year from the 16th March next in which to provide a substitute, either by negotiation or by legislation. And this remark is applicable to the fisheries as well as to every other interest touched by the treaty. I cannot doubt that the two contracting parties will approach the whole question in the determination to settle it on the permanent foundations of justice and equity; but the first step in this direction is the notice to terminate the existing treaty.

Mr. RAMSEY. Mr. President, a persistent effort has been made to excite hostility against the reciprocity treaty, by enlarging upon the advantages to Canada and the other British provinces of North America under its third article, as if that article, and the commercial exchanges which it authorized, was the total scope of the negotiation of 1854. We hear nothing, or next to nothing, of the extension of our American rights in the Newfoundland fisheries; nothing of the free navigation secured to the western States both of the lower channel of the St. Lawrence river and of the ship canals of Canada; and yet, sir, these are leading and vital provisions in favor of the United States, and were the consideration received for the free exchange of natural products across the northern frontier of the United States. Icannot think that the discussion here or elsewhere transpiring of late has fully considered the historical bearings of this subject; and I propose to present a simple narrative in response to the question, what is the reciprocity treaty? In the answer to this question I shall comprise nearly all that I desire to urge in opposition to the resolution reported by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which is now before the Senate.

Mr. Pierce was inaugurated President in March, 1853. He was immediately confronted by a serious dispute as to the rights of American fishermen upon the banks of Newfoundland and the adjacent fishing grounds. At the conclusion of the peace of 1783, the treaty between the United States and Great Britain had secured to Americans the same rights in the cod and mackerel fisheries of the northeast Atlantic coast which they had possessed prior to the Revolution. After the war of 1812 a controversy arose whether the stipulations of 1783 upon the subject of the fisheries were abrogated by that war. It resulted in the convention of 1818, whereby the general liberty of taking and curing fish, although yielded by Great Britain, was most seriously impaired by a provision that the United States renounced forever any liberty previously 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 the British dominions, except certain districts of Newfoundland and Labrador. The colonies always claimed, and the English Government finally adopted the construction, that these three marine miles were to be measured from headland to headland, and not from the coast line; while, on the American side, it was contended that American fishermen had a right to enter and fish in any of the bays

which indent the shores, provided they never approached for the purpose of taking fish within three marine miles of the coast by which such bays were encompassed.

The danger of collision, unavoidable from such a provision, culminated in 1853. In that year, as Lord Elgin once said in a speech at Liverpool

"A British admiral and an American commodore were sailing on the coast with instructions founded upon opposite conclusions, and a single indiscreet act on the part of one or the other of those naval officers would have brought on a conflict involving all the horrors of war."

President Pierce was from a region of the country deeply interested in the Newfoundland fishery, himself regarding it as "a pursuit connected to no inconsiderable degree with our national prosperity and strength;" and he was naturally solicitous, while avoiding collision with England, to restore the rights secured to our citizens by the liberal treaty of 1783. This feeling prevailed intensely among the people of New England. Mr. Webster, on the 25th of July, 1852, said to his neighbors at Marshfield:

"The most important consequences are involved in this matter. Our fisheries have been the very nurseries of our Navy. If our flag-ships have met and conquered the enemy on the sea, the fisheries are at the bottoin of it. The fisheries were the seeds from which those glorious triumphs were born and sprung."

So much for the special interest of New England, and the grave national complication which its embarrassment involved. From an opposite quarter, from the grain-growing Northwest, there came simultaneously a most urgent demand for the free navigation of the river St. Lawrence from its connection with the chain of great lakes to the ocean. On the 2d of May, 1850, the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, A. W. Buell, of Michigan, J. A. McClernand, of Illinois, and E. G. Spaulding, of New York, presented an elaborate report, asserting the natural right of great inland communities, situated upon the sources of a navigable river, to pursue its channel to the ocean without material obstruction from any community organized over the mouth or lower sections of the stream, and asking that the application of this principle to the St. Lawrence might be the subject of concurrent legislation or a treaty between the United States and Great Britain, thus transferring a natural right to an international obligation. Others enlarged upon this recommendation, and no one with more eloquence that John A. Dix, while Senator from New York. He said:

"I have no hesitation in predicting that vessels will be laden with wheat at Chicago, Green Bay, Detroit, and Cleveland, and unloaded at Liverpool. Ship-owners, producers, all will be greatly benefited by this free commerce, which will have an advantage in avoiding transhipment between the point of embarkation and the sea or the foreign market."

It was evident long before 1854 that the freedom of the St. Lawrence, with all its immense expansions into lakes, was inseparable from any commercial treaty by or on behalf of the British colonies with the United States.

As early as 1849 the British colonies on this continent sought admission to American markets with their products, which were then, as now, almost exclusively agricultural, animals, and their produce, or products of the forest, mines, and fisheries. Great Britain, by the repeal of all discriminations in favor of the importation of colonial breadstuffs and lumber, and the surrender of all revenue regulations by the colonies in favor of British manufactures, had gone far to establish the commercial independence of the provinces; but there was no alternative after the home Government had definitely established Sir Robert Peel's policy of 1846 repealing the corn laws Even the navigation acts were made to yield to the new impulse, England proudly asserting her ability to compete with the merchant marine of the world, nothwithstanding the commerce of every port in her vast dominions, European and colonial, was placed for the ships of all countries upon the footing of an unrestricted coasting trade. Under such a change of circumstances our colonial neighbors naturally sought to buy and sell in American cities and manufacturing towns. Canada came forward with an overture for the free admission of certain articles, the natural production of Canada and the United States, into each country respectively; but Congress would not entertain the proposition unless extended to the other Atlantic provinces of England, and unless it included an adjustment of the fishery dispute,

and also a provision, in the interest of the northwestern States, for the free navigation of the St. Lawrence.

Thus the measure took the form of a tripartite treaty, negotiated between William L. Marcy and James, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, confirmed by the Senate of the United States on the 5th of June, 1854, and passing into operation on the 16th of March, 1855. It has since regulated the commerce between the United States and the provinces of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward's Island, and Newfoundland; but the district occupied by the Hudson Bay Company, now called Central British America, and the Pacific colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, were not included in the treaty. I proceed with a brief review of its stipulations.

The preamble expresses the mutual desire of the contracting parties" to avoid further misunderstanding in regard to the extent of the right of fishery on the coasts of British North America," and to regulate the commerce and navigation between their respective territories and people, and more especially between her Majesty's possessions in North America and the United States in such manner as to render the same reciprocally beneficial and satisfactory."

The importance of the navigation of the St. Lawrence, with its Canadian canalage, to the western producer, is every year more apparent. The values which passed through the St. Lawrence from the United States, (mostly western products,) were $3,505,511 for 1861, and $5,198,920 for 1862. The pressure of western transportation upon the Welland canal is very great, inducing a discussion of the policy of its enlargement; and as the mineral resources of Lake Superior are developed, an Ottawa ship canal will probably be added to the public works of Canada. The West needs them all, and every additional avenue which national or State enterprise can provide, including a ship canal around the falls of Niagara, and from Oswego to Albany. Already ocean vessels are seen not unfrequently at the wharves of Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago; and unless Congress shall deprive the Northwest of the undisputed possession of its great natural water communication with the Atlantic, the foreign commerce of the lake coast is destined to a rapid and most auspicious progress. I trust no selfish or sectional crusade will deprive the interior community I represent of these advantages.

And now we come to the provincial side of the account current of reciprocity. The third article of the treaty agrees that the following articles, be

onies or the United States, shall be admitted into each country respectively free of duty: grain,flour, and breadstuffs of all kinds; animals of all kinds; fresh, smoked, and salted meats; cotton, wool, seeds and vegetables; undried fruits, dried fruits; fish of all kinds; products of fish, and of all other creatures living in the water; poultry, eggs; hides, furs, skins, or tails undressed; stone or marble in its crude or unwroughtstate; slate; butter, cheese, and tallow; lard, horns, manures; ores of metals of all kinds; coal; pitch, tar, turpentine, ashes; timber and lumber of all kinds, round, hewed, sawed, unmanufactured, in whole or in part; firewood; plants, shrubs, and trees; pelts, wool; fish oil; rice, broomcorn, and bark; gypsum, ground or unground; hewn or wrought or unwrought burr or grindstones; dyestuffs; flax, hemp, and tow unmanufactured; unmanufactured tobacco; rags.

By the first article it was agreed that in additioning the growth and produce of the British colto the liberty secured to the United States fishermen by the convention of October 20, 1818, of taking, curing, and drying fish on certain coasts of the British North American colonies therein defined, the inhabitants of the United States shall have, in common with the subjects of her Britannic Majesty, the liberty to take fish of every kind except shell-fish on the sea-coasts and shores, and in the bays, harbors, and creeks of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward's Island, and of the several islands thereunto adjacent, without being restricted to any distance from the shore; with permission to land upon the coasts and shores of those colonies and the islands thereof, and also upon the Magdalen islands for the purpose of drying their nets and curing their fish, provided that in so doing they do not interfere with the rights of private property or British fishermen in the peaceable use of any part of the said const in their occupancy for the same purpose. This liberty was confined to the sea fishery; the salmon and shad fisheries, and all fisheries in rivers and the mouths of rivers being exclusively reserved for British fishermen.

The second article extended the same right of fishery to British subjects on the American Atlantic coast north of latitude 360.

The controversy in regard to the fisheries having been thus adjusted, that branch of American industry is seldom mentioned, but its commercial and maritime importance is steadily increasing. The census of 1850 returned $3,067,655 as the value for that year of the cod and mackerel fisheries of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, while the census of 1860 shows the product of that year to be $4,183,503. Subject the northeastern fisheries and fishers to the hazards and obstructions of the convention of 1818, instead of the liberal provision of the reciprocity treaty, and the whole country would ring again, as it did in 1853, with the importance of the fishing interest and the wrongs of all interested.

The navigation of the St. Lawrence and the Canadian canals was the subject of the fourth article, which is as follows:

"It is agreed that the citizens and inhabitants of the United States shall have the right to navigate the river St. Lawrence and the canals in Canada, used as the means of communicating between the great lakes and the Atlantic ocean with their vessels, boats, and crafts as fully and freely as the subjects of her Britannic Majesty, subject only to the same tolls and other assessments as now are or may be hereafter exacted of her Majesty's said subjects."

A similar right of navigating Lake Michigan was secured to British subjects. The Government of the United States engaged to urge upon the State governments to secure to British subjects the use of the several State canals on terms of equality with the inhabitants of the United States. And the province of New Brunswick was restrained from the levy of any export duty or other duty on lumber or timber cut in the State of Maine and shipped to the United States through the river St. John.

The State canals have never been opened to British subjects as above suggested.

I cheerfully admit, Mr. President, that our provincial neighbors have received great and substantial benefits from the facilities of trade secured by this article, but I deny, I entirely fail to perceive, that we have been in any sense losers. The Register of the Treasury Department reports the aggregate of exports from the United States to Canada and other British possessions in North America, from 1852 to 1860, inclusive, to be $195,303,384, of which $140,393,956 have been the growth or manufacture of the United States. During the same period of nine years (three before and six subsequent to the treaty) the value of imports into the United States from British America amounted to $135,555,671.

The course of trade with Canada is fully illustrated by tables of statistics communicated at the last session of Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury. They show an average export trade to Canada of $16,826,797 for eight fiscal years following the formation of the reciprocity treaty, while the imports from Canada into the United States for the same period show an average annual value of $16,643,825. The Canadian movement to American markets is almost exclusively of natural productions, admitted free of duty, while upon the imports from the United States to Canada, largely consisting of manufactures and foreign productions, the Canadian people have been charged by their Government with an average taxation (by the collection of customs duties) of $1,747,526 per annum.

of our products and manufactures which were subject to taxation by the Canadian tariff was $2,118,706. The average taxation being twenty per cent. the Canadian consumers paid $423,741 into the treasury of the province. The importations from Canada during 1863 were $20,050,432, or an aggregate of trade with the United States of $43,159,794.

I will not extend these statistical statements. They concur with my former impressions, as a citizen of the Northwest, that the treaty is mutual and beneficial. To repeat the language of a memorial from the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, presented to the Senate January 27, 1862:

"All parties to the treaty have observed its stipulations in good faith. The Americans possess and enjoy their enlarged rights in the British fisheries on the northeastern coast, and the free navigation of the St. Lawrence; neither Government has interrupted the exchanges of the free list prescribed by the third article; while upon a subject properly excluded from the provisions of the treaty-namely, the tariffs of the United States and the adjacent provinces in respect to articles of manufacture and foreign productionthere is no legitimate ground of complaint in any quarter. Prior to 1861 the duties by the Canadian tariff were con

siderably enlarged after 1854, (from sixteen per cent. to twenty per cent, average ;) but recently the American scale of duties has been advanced in a still greater proportion. In both cases the changes have been enforced by financial necessity and do not conflict with the spirit or terms of the treaty of 1854,"

With these views it seems to me that a recent recommendation of the Detroit Board of Trade, that the treaty should not be disturbed at this time, but that the Department of State, or a joint commission of the Governments interested, should proceed with a revision of existing stipulations, is worthy of our consideration.

I appreciate fully, Mr. President, our financial necessities, but I doubt whether we shall largely increase the revenue on the northern frontier by substituting a duty of thirty per cent. ad valorem, or whatever may be the average of the present tariff. Suppose we substitute a duty of five per cent. upon the free list of the treaty, (or any rate which will not materially restrict present commercial intercourse,) as might be readily stipu lated by a supplementary treaty, and observe its effect upon the revenues during a period of five years. I have an impression that we should receive far more revenue from such a minimum

duty than we would do under a duty six times greater.

Nor can I agree with the opinion so confidently advanced that the British provinces are entirely at our mercy in the matter of their communication to advantageous markets. We may exclude them by restrictive legislation from our cities and thoroughfares, we may subject their people to temporary inconvenience, but under the federal union now proposed of British America, and which is certain to be accomplished, such a policy on our part will force the speedy construction of a railroad to Halifax, and other measures of commercial and industrial independence.

The State of Minnesota has repeatedly urged the revision of the reciprocity treaty, but always in the interest of further freedom, not additional restrictions, of commercial intercourse. Such, if I mistake not, will be the public sentiment of our Pacific States. As already stated; the present treaty is inoperative west of the great lakes. Since its date the provinces of Vancouver Island and British Columbia have been organized on the Pacific coast, and are valuable extensions of the trade of California and Oregon. All these communities should be recognized as parties to any commercial arrangement between the United States and the English provinces of North America. East of the mountains the immense and fertile basin of the Saskatchawan river, whose sources are now ascertained to flow from a gold-bearing region as productive as British Columbia or the adjacent American Territories of Idaho and Montana, is soon to be the scene of a systematic colonization from Canada and England. This region, which, with the Red river settlement, is becoming well known, and is designated as Central British America, will be closely related to Minnesota. The year 1866 will witness the construction of a telegraph from St. Paul through Selkirk settlement, the Saskatchawan val

boundary of British Columbia, destined at no distant date to be extended through Russian America and connect with the line from St. Petersburg. An emigrant route from Minnesota to the Sas katchawan and Cariboo gold fields will be imme