The Administration at
Washington was sympathetic. George Brown was appointed along with
the British Ambassador, Sir Edward Thornton, to open
negotiations. Under Brown's energetic leadership a settlement of
all outstanding issues was drafted in 1874, which permitted
freedom of trade in natural and in most manufactured products for
twenty-one years, and settled fishery, coasting trade,
navigation, and minor boundary issues. But diplomats proposed,
and the United States Senate disposed. Protectionist feeling was
strong at Washington, and the currency problem absorbing, and
hence this broad and statesmanlike essay in neighborliness could
not secure an hour's attention. This plan having failed, the
Canadian Government fell back on the letter of the treaty. A
Commission which consisted of the Honorable E. H. Kellogg
representing the United States, Sir Alexander T. Galt
representing Canada, and the Belgian Minister to Washington, M.
Delfosse, as chairman, awarded Canada and Newfoundland $5,500,000
as the excess value of the fisheries for the ten years the
arrangement was to run. The award was denounced in the United
States as absurdly excessive; but a sense of honor and the
knowledge that millions of dollars from the Alabama award were
still in the Treasury moved the Senate finally to acquiesce,
though only for the ten-year term fixed by treaty.
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