The treaty now submitted contains no provision affecting tariff duties,
and, independently of the position assumed upon the part of the United
States that no alteration in our tariff or other domestic legislation
could be made as the price or consideration of obtaining the rights of
our citizens secured by treaty, it was considered more expedient to
allow any change in the revenue laws of the United States to be made by
the ordinary exercise of legislative will and in the promotion of the
public interests. Therefore the addition to the free list of fish, fish
oil, whale and seal oil, etc., recited in the last article of the
treaty, is wholly left to the action of Congress; and in connection
therewith the Canadian and Newfoundland right to regulate sales of bait
and other fishing supplies within their own jurisdiction is recognized,
and the right of our fishermen to freely purchase these things is made
contingent by this treaty upon the action of Congress in the
modification of our tariff laws.
Our social and commercial intercourse with those populations who have
been placed upon our borders and made forever our neighbors is made
apparent by a list of United States common carriers, marine and inland,
connecting their lines with Canada, which was returned by the Secretary
of the Treasury to the Senate on the 7th day of February, 1888, in
answer to a resolution of that body; and this is instructive as to the
great volume of mutually profitable interchanges which has come into
existence during the last half century.
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