think any one argument, certainly that my argument,
caused the defeat of the Fisheries Treaty, negotiated by Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain and Mr. Bayard during Mr. Cleveland's
first Administration. The argument against it was too strong
not to have prevailed without any one man's contribution to
it; and the Senate was not so strongly inclined to support
President Cleveland as to give a two-thirds majority to a
measure, unless it seemed clearly for the public interest.
He had his Republican opponents to reckon with, and the Democrats
in the Senate disliked him very much, and gave him a feeble
and half-hearted support.

The question of our New England fisheries has interested
the people of the country, especially of New England, from
our very early history. Burke spoke of them before the Revolutionary
War, as exciting even then the envy of England. One of the
best known and most eloquent passages in all literature is
his description of the enterprise of our fathers. Burke adds
to that description:

"When I reflect upon the effects, when I see how profitable
they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink,
and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt
and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something
to the spirit of Liberty."

The War of the Revolution, of course, interrupted for a time
the fisheries of the American colonies. But the fishermen
were not idle. They manned the little Navy whose exploits
have never yet received from history its due meed of praise.
They furnished the ships' companies of Manly and Tucker and
Biddle and Abraham Whipple. They helped Paul Jones to strike
terror into St. George's Channel. In 1776, in the first year
of the Revolutionary War, American privateers, most of them
manned by our fishermen, captured three hundred and forty-
two British vessels.

The fisheries came up again after the war. Mr. Jefferson
commended them to the favor of the nation in an elaborate
and admirable report. He said that before the war 8,000 men
and 52,000 tons of shipping were annually employed by Massachusetts
in the cod and whale fisheries. England and France made urgent
efforts and offered large bounties to get our fishermen to
move over there.

For a long time the fisheries were aided by direct bounties.
Later the policy of protection has been substituted.

John Adams has left on record that when he went abroad as
our representative in 1778, and again when the