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1885-s] The Tariff struggle. 659 commission, to which should be referred not only the question of the fisheries, but also the more general question of trade relations. To this recommendation the Senate in February, 1886, declined to accede ; and soon afterwards an American fishing vessel was seized at Annapolis Basin, in Nova Scotia, for purchasing bait. Other seizures for various causes followed in quick succession, till the list of complaints was swollen to formidable proportions. By an Act of Congress of March 3, 1887, the President was invested with power to enforce in his discretion measures of retaliation. But, after the failure of his recommendation for a joint commission, although the idea of a trade agreement was abandoned, negotiations were entered upon for an amicable arrangement. To that end plenipotentiaries bearing commissions from the executive authority of each country met in Washington in November, 1887. Their conferences resulted in what was known as the Bayard-Chamberlain Treaty, February 15, 1888. The object of the treaty was to provide for the proper interpretation and enforcement of the Convention of 1818. It looked to the removal of the duty on the products of Canadian fisheries only in a certain contingency. The treaty was rejected by the Senate in the following August. President Cleveland, interpreting this as a disapproval of his policy of negotiation, then proposed to Congress a plan of retaliation, involving the interruption of the bonded transit system. This recommendation Congress did not adopt ; and, as the Act of February, 1887, remained unexecuted, no measure of retaliation was put into force. The Canadian government, however, had undertaken, pending the consideration of the treaty, to sell to American fishing vessels licenses for the enjoyment of port privileges ; and this system continued in operation after the treaty was rejected. The question of the fisheries had in reality been swept, together with various other questions, into the vortex of a great struggle over the protec- tive tariff. This contest was precipitated by President Cleveland's annual message of December 6, 1887. The brief reference to the tariff in his first annual message has already been noticed; but his subsequent reflections, enforced by a steadily increasing excess of revenue, had aroused his apprehensions, and he proceeded to discuss the subject with characteristic zeal and directness. The exaction from the people of an amount of taxes greater than was necessary for the "careful and economical maintenance " of government he pronounced an " indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice," which crippled the national energies, suspended the country's develop- ment, hindered investment in productive enterprise, threatened financial disturbance, and invited schemes of public plunder ; and, after discussing various suggested modes of relief, he attacked the existing laws as " the vicious, inequitable, and illogical source of unnecessary taxation." So stubbornly, he affirmed, had all efforts to reform the tariff been resisted by its beneficiaries, that they could hardly complain of the suspicion CH. xxi. 42 2