nly design was to call the attention
of the British Government to the extraordinary facts, and leave to
the determination of that Government whether any thing should be done
to mitigate the glaring and now demonstrated injustice of the award.
"The Government of the United States," said Mr. Evarts in closing his
dispatch, "will not attempt to press its own interpretation of the
treaty against the deliberate interpretation of her Majesty's
Government to the contrary." He made no rejoinder to Lord Salisbury,
and paid on the day it was due--one year from the date of award--the
amount adjudged to Great Britain. Every American felt that under such
circumstances it was better to pay than to be paid the five and a half
million dollars.

It is not difficult to understand how Mr. Delfosse was brought to such
an extraordinary conclusion, and there has been no disposition in the
United States to impute his action to improper motives. The wrong was
done when he was selected as third Commissioner, and the tenacity with
which he was urged will always require explanation from the British
Government. Mr. Delfosse had spent his life in the Diplomatic service,
was not in any sense a man of affairs, and was profoundly ignorant of
the fishery question. From the diplomatic point of view he could not
understand that the Dominion of Canada should open her inshore
fisheries to such a power as the United States without some
consideration beyond that of mere commercial demand. Measuring in his
own mind the value of such a right on the restricted coast of his own
country, it was natural that he should multiply it somewhat in the
proportion of the vastly extended coast of British America, now thrown
open to the United States. He was further influenced by the claim
shrewdly put forward by the British agent and British attorneys that
the inshore fisheries were worth $12,000,000 to the United States for
the period of the treaty, and the Newfoundland fisheries $2,280,000 in
addition. It is difficult to speak of these pretensions with respect,
or to treat them as honestly put forward by men to whom all the facts
were familiar.

Above all, Mr. Delfosse knew that the Belgian sovereign, whose favor
was his own fortune, would earnestly desire a triumph for the British
cause. Both sides made strong representations, and presented
statistics and tabular statements and elaborate comparisons, which he
did not analyze, and perhaps did not understand.