"been the fur seals. This convention had, said Mr. Phelps, virtually agreed on verbally, except in its details," but the consideration of it had been suspended at the request of the Canadian Government; and he expressed the opinion that the British Government would not execute it without the concurrence of Canada, and that the concurrence of Canada could not reasonably be expected. Mr. Phelps continued: "Under these circumstances the Government of the United States must, in my opinion, either submit to have these valuable fisheries destroyed or must take measures to prevent their destruction by capturing the vessels employed in it. Between these alternatives it does not appear to me there should be the slightest hesitation. Much learning has been expended upon the discussion of the abstract question of the right of mare clausum. I do not conceive it to be applicable to the present case. Here is a valuable fishery, and a large and, if properly managed, permanent industry, the property of the nations on whose shores it is carried on. It is proposed by the colony of a foreign nation, in defiance of the joint remonstrance of all the countries interested, to destroy this business by the indiscriminate slaughter and extermination of the animals in question, in the open neighboring sea, during the period of gestation, when the common dictates of humanity ought to protect them, were there no interest at all involved. And it is suggested that we are prevented from defending ourselves against such depredations because the sea at a certain distance from the coast is free. The same line of argument would take under its protection piracy and the slave trade, when prosecuted in the open sea, or would justify one nation in destroying the commerce of another by placing dangerous obstructions and derelicts in the open sea near its coasts. There are many things that cannot be allowed to be done on the open sea with impunity, and against which every sea is mare clausum. And the right of self defense as to person and property prevails there as fully as elsewhere. If the fish upon the Canadian coasts could be destroyed by scattering poison in the open sea adjacent, with some small profit to those engaged in it, would Canada, upon the just principles of international law, be held defenseless in such a case? Yet that process would be no more destructive, inhuman, and wanton than this. If precedents are wanting for a defense so necessary and so proper it is because precedents for such a course of conduct are likewise unknown. The best international law has arisen from precedents that have been established when the just occasion for them arose, undeterred by the discussion of abstract and inadequate rules." 1 I Case of the United States, Appendix I, 181-183, Fur Seal Arbitration, II. It thus came about that the negotiations, Circumstances under which seemed at one time practically concludwhich Negotiaed, for the adoption of cooperative measures tions were Susfor the protection of the fur seals in Behring pended. Sea, were suspended. There are certain facts that may not be destitute of significance in this relation. On the 15th of February 1888 a treaty was signed at Washington by Mr. Bayard, William L. Putnam, and James B. Angell, on the part of the United States, and by Joseph Chamberlain, Sir Charles Tupper, and Sir L. S. Sackville West, on the part of Great Britain, for the adjustment and regulation of the various questions long pending between the two countries in relation to the fisheries adjacent to the eastern coasts of British North America. This treaty was duly submitted to the Senate, and on the 7th of May the Committee on Foreign Relations, to whom it was referred, reported it adversely. It was on the 20th of April that Mr. White reported Lord Salisbury's promise to have a draft of a convention prepared to carry into effect the proposals of the United States for the protection of the fur seals. On the 16th of May Lord Salisbury, as Mr. White reported, "had just received a communication from the Canadian government," asking that the matter be postponed. Renewal of Seizures in 1889. In 1888 no seizures were made in Behring Sea, and the diplomatic discussion rested till the 24th of August 1889, when Mr. Edwardes, British chargé d'affaires ad interim, addressed a note to Mr. Blaine, who had then become Secretary of State, in relation to repeated rumors that had lately reached Her Majesty's government, to the effect that United States cruisers had "stopped, searched, and even seized British vessels in Behring Sea outside of the three-mile limit from the nearest land." Mr. Edwardes said he was instructed by the Marquis of Salisbury to inquire whether the United States Government was in possession of similar information, and further to ask that stringent instructions might be sent out, at the earliest moment, with a view to prevent the possibility of such occurrences taking place. Lord Salisbury had, Mr. Edwardes stated, also desired him to say that Sir Julian Pauncefote, Her Majesty's minister, would be prepared on his return to Washington in the autumn to discuss the whole question, and The report of the committee was published, as was also a minority report. that a settlement could not but be hindered by any measures of force which might be resorted to by the United States. Mr. Blaine immediately replied "that the same rumors, prob ably based on truth," had reached the Government of the United States, but that there had been no official communication received on the subject. It was, he said, the earnest desire of the President to have such an adjustment as should remove all possible ground of misunderstanding concerning existing troubles in Behring Sea, and the President believed that the responsibility for delay in the adjustment could not properly be charged to the United States. Mr. Blaine said it gave him pleasure to assure Mr. Edwardes that the Government of the United States would endeavor to be prepared for the discussion with Sir Julian Pauncefote, and that, in the opinion of the President, the points at issue between the two governments were capable of prompt adjustment on a basis entirely honorable to both. Subsequently to this correspondence Mr. Edwardes left at the Department of State two communications from the Marquis of Salisbury, both dated the 2d of October 1889. In one of them his lordship, referring to the previous negotiations for a convention, observed that they "were suspended for a time in consequence of objections raised by the Dominion of Canada and of doubts thrown on the physical data on which any restrictive legislation must have been based," but that Her Majesty's government were "fully sensible of the importance of this question and of the great value which will attach to an international agreement in respect to it," and that Her Majesty's representative would "be furnished with the requisite instructions in case the Secretary of State should be willing to enter upon the discussion." In the other communication Lord Salisbury protested against the fresh seizures on the ground that they were wholly unjustified by international law. Positions of Mr. These communications were answered by Mr. Blaine on the 22d of January 1890. In this reply Mr. Blaine took the ground that "the Canadian vessels arrested and detained in the Behring Sea were engaged in a pursuit that was in itself contra bonos mores, a pursuit which of necessity involves a serious and permanent injury to the rights of the Government and people of the United States." To establish this ground, it was not 5627-50 necessary, he said, "to argue the question of the extent and nature of the sovereignty of this Government over the waters of the Behring Sea," or "to define the powers and privileges ceded by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Russia in the treaty by which the Alaskan territory was transferred to the United States." It could not be unknown to Her Majesty's government that one of the most valuable sources of revenue from the Alaskan possessions was the fur-seal fisheries of Behring Sea. "Those fisheries had," said Mr. Blaine, "been exclusively controlled by the Government of Russia, without interference or without question, from their original discovery until the cession of Alaska to the United States in 1867,” and in like manner by the Government of the United States from 1867 to 1886, when "certain Canadian vessels asserted their right to enter, and by their ruthless course to destroy the fisheries" and with them "the resulting industries" which were so valuable. The Government of the United States at once proceeded to check this movement, and it was, Mr. Blaine declared, a cause of "unfeigned surprise" that Her Majesty's government should immediately interfere to defend, and encourage by defending, the course of the Canadians "in disturbing an industry which had been carefully developed for more than ninety years under the flags of Russia and the United States." So great had been the injury from this irregular and destructive slaughter in the open waters of Behring Sea, that the Government of the United States had been compelled to reduce the number of seals allowed to be taken on the islands from 100,000 to 60,000 annually. It was doubtful, said Mr. Blaine, whether Her Majesty's government would abide by the three-mile rule, on which it was sought to defend the Canadian sealers, if an attempt were made to interfere with the pearl fisheries of Ceylon, which extended more than twenty miles from the shore line, which were enjoyed by England without molestation, and which Her Majesty's government felt authorized to sell the right to engage in, from year to year, to the highest bidder; nor was it credible that destructive modes of fishing on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, by the explosion of dynamite or giant powder, would be justified or even permitted by Great Britain on the plea that the vicious acts were committed more than three miles from shore. Why were not the two cases parallel? The Canadian vessels were engaged in the taking of fur seals in a manner that insured the extermination of the species, in order that "temporary and immoral gain" might be acquired by a few persons. "The law of the sea," continued Mr. Blaine, "is not lawlessness." One step beyond the protection of acts which were immoral in themselves and which inevitably tended to results against the interests and welfare of mankind, and piracy would find its justification. The forcible resistance to which the United States was constrained in Behring Sea was, declared Mr. Blaine, in the President's judgment, "demanded not only by the necessity of defending the traditional and long-established rights of the United States, but also the rights of good government and of good morals the world over." The President was persuaded that "all friendly nations" would "concede to the United States the same rights and privileges on the lands and in the waters of Alaska which the same friendly nations always conceded to the Empire of Russia." + Negotiations at During the months of March and April 1890 several conferences were held at Washington between Mr. Blaine, M. De Struve, the Russian minister; Sir Julian Pauncefote, and Mr. Charles H. Tupper, minister of marine and fisheries of Canada, on the subject of a joint arrangement, but no agreement was reached. On the 1st of March Mr. Blaine communicated to Sir Julian Pauncefote "a large mass of evidence" to show that "the killing of seals in the open sea tends certainly and rapidly to the extermination of the species." On the 9th of March Sir Julian communicated to Mr. Blaine in reply a memorandum prepared by Mr. Tupper, to which was appended a note by Mr. George M. Dawson, assistant director of the geological survey of Canada. In this memorandum it was maintained that, while the indiscriminate slaughter of seals on the rookeries was most injurious to seal life, no instance could be found where a rookery had ever been destroyed, depleted, or even injured by the killing of seals at sea only; and it was also maintained that, though Mr. Blaine had contended that the seals in the waters of Behring Sea were undisturbed until 1886, "extraordinary slaughter" occurred there prior to 1870, and that pelagic sealing had since been carried on without interference till the seizures were made in 1886. In support of this asseveration various reports of agents of the United States from 1870 to 1886 1 Mr. Blaine to Sir Julian Pauncefote, January 22, 1890, For. Rel. 1890, 366-370, |