THE CANADIAN FISHERIES QUESTION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1565, 15 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 Canadian Fishery Laws last May, have now culminated in retaliatory measures lately under discussion in Congress. The main provisions of one of these Bills affirms that Canada has been guilty of interpreting its laws in a sense unfavourable to tho United States. Therefore the President is to be authorised not only to forbid Canadian—and, we presume Newfoundland —vessels from entering American ports, but al-o to prohibit cars loaded with goods from crossing the Canadian frontier. In other words, a blockade is to be established against the Dominion. It is needless to say that, so far, this proposal has met with a very cool reception. In the Senate, however 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 in the dispute, is equally 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 prosiac form, they have once or twice mobbed some American fishery men who landed to and sell the fish which they had caught within what the Canadians regard as their own territorial limits. But if anyone has maltreated the Americans the law is open to them, and as the impartiality of the British Courts has been a subject of intense admiration to the Americans, the offenders, they may be certain, will meet with the punishment the : r illegality merits. That, however, is too tame a mode of redress for Mr Frye. He warns England that she is following a course warranted to bring her into trouble, and though Mr Edmunds will not go as far as this, Senator Ingalls insists that it “means war.” The Bill eventually passed the Senate by fortyrsix votes to one, 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 imeri? can House of Representatives. In regard to the Commissioner to be chosen, it is : felt that a distinguished British negotiator

of I X- er'-mcf, well informed concorning the Uni o States and Canada, such as (he Marquis of Lome, would best represent British inte ents, «nd at the same time make duo allowance for Ameiican sm-ceptib'lities in this question.