tee would not
recommend that the Government of the United States disregard it, _if
the Government of her Britannic Majesty, after a full review of all the
facts and circumstances of the case, shall conclude and declare the
award to be lawfully and honorably due_." It was aptly added that
"the intelligence and virtue of British statesmen cannot fail to
suggest that arbitration can only be retained as a fixed mode of
adjusting international disputes by demonstrating its efficiency as a
methods of securing mutual justice and thus assuring that mutual
consent without which award and verdicts are powerful only for mischief."

To the resolution approving the report made by Mr. Hamlin, Mr. Edmunds
offered an amendment, declaring that "Articles XVIII. and XXI. of the
treaty between the United States and Great Britain, concluded on the
8th of May, 1871 (remitting the duties on fish and fish-oil), ought to
be terminated at the earliest period consistent with the provisions
of Article XXXIII. of the same treaty (providing that the remission
should be for ten years)." A brief debate ensued and the resolution,
with Mr. Edmund's amendment, was adopted by a large majority. The bill
reported by the committee, appropriating the five and a half million
dollars, was then passed without objection. Congress had now done with
the subject, and its final disposition was left to the Executive
Department of the Government.(5)

Responding to the judgment of Congress, Mr. Evarts, then Secretary of
State, presented the whole argument against the award in a dispatch
of September 27, 1878. He was compelled to believe from the magnitude
of the award, that considerations foreign to the questions submitted
had been brought before the Arbitration. He called the attention of
Lord Salisbury, who had become Foreign Secretary in the second Disraeli
Cabinet, that five fishing-seasons under the treaty had elapsed before
the Halifax Commission was organized, and that therefore we had actual
statistics showing the value of the privilege conceded to the United
States, instead of the conjectural estimates which had been used when
the treaty was made. By these actual and careful statistics, it had
been found that from the inshore fishing American fishermen had in the
five seasons secured 125,961 barrels of mackerel,--worth when packed
and ready for exportation $3.75 per barrel, and in the aggregate
$472,353. But in this price, as Mr. Evarts explained, "are