The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-02-22
The
President and Congress~The
Treaty ON the Fisheries.


The two houses of Congress, it would APP
pear, have become 80 badly demoralized by
the exposures from the Credit Mobiler and
Senatorial corruption Investigations as to re-
quire the special attention of the President in
reference to the practical business matters of
the session. Thus it appears that the other
day he went up to the Capitol and had regu-
lar business consultation with General Banks
and other members of the Committee on For
eign Affairs of the House, and next similar
conference with General Cameron and other
members of the Committee on Foreign Rela-
tions of the Senate, in which he plainly
told them that if we expect Great Britain to
pay the Geneva award in September (some
fifteen millions of dollars) we must pay for the
fisheries and the claims in regard to them
awarded her in the same treaty. In reply the
members of the committees then promised i'm
mediate attention to the Fisheries bill, but
against it we may expect another demurrer
from General Butler, in the name of the fisher
men of Massachusetts.
In relation to these fisheries, the Treaty of
Washington provides substantially that for
term of ten years, citizens of the United
States, in the valuable fisheries of New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward
Island, Newfoundland, &C., shall have the
same general liberties of fishing as British
subjects, and that British subjects shall have
the same general liberties as citizens of the
United States to catch and cure their fish and
dry their nets, &C., along our seaboard and
its bays and creeks, down to the thirty-ninth
parallel of north latitude, or Delaware Bay.
But, inasmuch as the fishing privileges to
citizens of the United States thus given in
Her Britannia Majesty's possessions are more
valuable than those given in reciprocity in the
waters of the United States to British subjects
the treaty further provides that Commissioners
shall be appointed-one by the United States,
one by Queen Victoria and third by these
two-to determine upon the balance in these
reciprocal fisheries in favor of Great Britain,
and that ''any sum of money which these
Commissioners may so award shall be paid BY
the United States government, in gross
sum, within twelve months after such award
shall have been given"
Now, whatever the award may be which
these Commissioners shall give for the free
dom to our citizens for ten years to fish near
the coasts and in the inland waters of the
British Provinces, from New Brunswick to
Newfoundland, and for the privileges to our
fishermen to cure their fish and dry their nets,
&C., in said Provinces, whether the sum shall
be five, ten or twenty millions of dollars, we
are bound to pay it; and Congress should at
once give the legislative authority necessary in
this matter to enable the President to meet
cur obligations as promptly as England re-
sponded to the treaty in reference to the
Geneva award and San Juan Island. General
Grant desires to avoid any possible complaint
of remissness or negligence on our part touch
ing this Treaty of Washington upon an agree
ment which may call for some money from our
Treasury, and we presume that the bill sug-
gested in the premises will be passed before
the expiration of this Congress, especially as
the President is acting under the impression
that from the 4th of March next there will be
no meeting Of Congress till the first Monday
Of next December.
The CONNECTICUT DEMOCRACY have had
their little love-feast, in which their liberal
republican brethren partook Of some OF the
side dishes. At the State Convention, in
Hartford, on the 10th, Charles II. Ingersoll
- H. taI