The Windham County reformer. (Battleboro, Vt.) 1876-1897, 1888-06-01
Frye on the Fishery Treaty.

AS stump speaking is the highest ambition
OF Republican congressman nowadays
: senator Frye must be credited with very
} effective effort in his talk upon the fisher,
treaty Wednesday. lie carefully avoided
any discussion of the principles of interna
tiona law involved, but as a stall twister,'
as an appeal to all the memories Of wrongs
which this country has treasured up against
Great Britain, the speech was success, and
answered Its purpose. England is mighty
mean country, and has always used this
country mean, whenever she had chance.
England and Canrda want to get free
American market for their fish. Ergo the
treaty with England is d.sgraceful surrcn-
der. This is the full logic of the speech and
it expects an intelligent American public to
overlook the fact that the treaty does not
| grant what Canada has been trying to force,
the free admission Of her fish to this coull-
try, but 1t secures everything which the
usages of nations from time immemo-
rial give one nation the right to claim
from another, all that America has ever
claimed in any of her negotiations OH this
subject from 1918 until the present day, and
all that Mr.. Frye himself only year ago said
that our fishermen wanted. In fact the ne
gotiation of the treaty was a remarkable tri-
umph of American diplomacy. The two
points on which Frye poured out his most
| laundering eloqucnce were the delimita-
ton, of bays so as to give England exclusive
jurisdiction in Il few of them more than six
miles wide ut the mouth, and the denial of
common commercial privileges" to our fish.
ermen in Canadian harbors. As to the first
of these Mr.. Frye well knows that America
gets far more than she will allow OH her own
two governments was just the opposite of their
contention in this case. America has always
claimed jurisdiction over all bays and
three miles out to sea from headland to
headand, and England has always denied
that it could extend more than three miles
from the shore line. The result was, there
fore, that neither party could consistently
claim what it demanded from the other, and
it was fair compromise by which the jurs-
diction was conceded in some bays, particll-
larry named. and denied in the others. As
to commercial privileges, = the treaty secures
all that can be counted as such. The only
privileges which are denied are those which
are classed as 'fishing privileges" the buy
ing of bait and fishing supplies, etc, (which have
always been recognized as separate thing
in international law, and i'm all treaties be-
tween civilized governments, and which any
n "a IN a riOht n ~ withhold n II |
peases. Moreover, Mr.. Frye himself testified
before the senate fishery committee last year,
that these identical privileges, as well as the
right to fish anywhere within the three-mile
limit, were of no Importance. And this is
the point to which his ''humiliating surren-
der" SINNERS down. His talk is that we
don't want any treaty or negotiation, but
simply an enforcement of the retaliatory res
1lution of congress, not as the president init
mated readiness to enforce it.. if settlement
could not be reached, by ceasing all CONNER
.ial intercourse with Canada, either by land
II water, but by excluding her vessels from
he same privileges in our harbors, as she
lenies to ours in her harbors. Mr.. Frye
$ well aware that this is the sheerest bun
'ome, and would amount to nothing, for the
simple reason that it would not affect one
epth as many Canadian ships as it would
American. The only thing to do was to
BRING Canada to reason by negotiation, ii
possible, and if not, to discipline her in a
way that she would feel.
Mr.. Frye's speech was an extraordinarily .
heap specimen of an extraordinarily cheap
ia of politics.