said waters and arrest all persons, and seize all vessels found to be, or to have been, engaged in any violation of the laws of the United States therein.-United States Statutes at Large, XXV. 1009, 1010. 1890, Jan. 22. SECRETARY BLAINE TO BRITISH MINISTER In the opinion of the President, 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 the people of the United States. To establish this ground it is not necessary to argue the question of the extent and nature of the sovereignty of this Government over the waters of the Behring Sea; it is not necessary to explain, certainly not 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. The weighty considerations growing out of the acquisition of that territory, with all rights on land and sea inseparably connected therewith, may be safely left out of view, while the grounds are set forth upon which this government rests its justification for the action complained of by Her Majesty's Government. It cannot be unknown to Her Majesty's Government that one of the most valuable sources of revenue from the Alaskan possessions is the fur-seal fisheries of the Behring Sea. Those fisheries had 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. From 1867 to 1886 the possession in which Russia had been undisturbed was enjoyed by this Government also. There was no interruption and no intrusion from any source. Vessels from other nations passing from time to time through Behring Sea to the Arctic Ocean in pursuit of whales had always abstained from taking part in the capture of seals. This uniform avoidance of all attempts to take fur-seal in those waters had been a constant recognition of the right held and exercised first by Russia and subsequently by this Gov ernment. It has also been the recognition of a fact now held beyond denial or doubt that the taking of seals in the open sea rapidly leads to their extinction. This is not only the well-known opinion of experts, both British and American, based upon prolonged observation and investigation, but the fact has also been demonstrated in a wide sense by the wellnigh total destruction of all seal fisheries except the one in the Behring Sea, which the Government of the United States is now striving to preserve, not altogether for the use of the American people, but for the use of the world at large. Whence did the ships of Canada derive the right to do in 1886 that which they had refrained from doing for more than ninety years? Upon what grounds did Her Majesty's Government defend in the year 1886 a course of conduct in the Behring Sea which she had carefully avoided ever since the discovery of that sea? By what reasoning did Her Majesty's Government conclude that an act may be committed with impunity against the rights of the United States which had never been attempted against the same rights when held by the Russian Empire? The ground upon which Her Majesty's Government justifies, or at least defends, the course of the Canadian vessels, rests upon the fact that they are committing their acts of destruction on the high seas, viz., more than three marine miles from the shore line. It is doubtful whether Her Majesty's Government would abide by this rule if the attempt were made to interfere with the pearl fisheries of Ceylon, which extend more than twenty miles from the shore line and have been enjoyed by England without molestation ever since their acquisition. So well recognized is the British ownership of those fisheries, regardless of the limit of the three-mile line, that Her Majesty's Government feels authorized to sell the pearl-fishing right from year to year to the highest bidder. Nor is it credible that modes of fishing on the Grand Banks, altogether practicable but highly destructive, would be justified or even permitted by Great Britain on the plea that the vicious acts were committed more than three miles from shore. There are, according to scientific authority, “great colonies of fish on the " Newfoundland banks." These colonies resemble the seats of great population on land. They remain 66 stationary, having a limited range of water in which to live and die. In these great colonies" it is, according to expert judgment, comparatively easy to explode dynamite or giant powder in such a way as to kill vast quantities of fish, and at the same time destroy countless numbers of eggs. Stringent laws have been necessary to prevent the taking of fish by the use of dynamite in many of the rivers and lakes of the United States. The same mode of fishing could readily be adopted with effect on the more shallow parts of the banks, but the destruction of fish in proportion to the catch, says a high authority, might be as great as ten thousand to one. Would Her Majesty's Government think that so wicked an act could not be prevented and its perpetrators punished simply because it had been committed outside of the three-mile line? Why are not the two cases parallel? . . . In this contention the Government of the United States has no occasion and no desire to withdraw or modify the positions which it has at any time maintained against the claims of the Imperial Government of Russia. The United States will not withhold from any nation the privileges which it demanded for itself when Alaska was part of the Russian Empire. Foreign Relations, 1890, pp. 366-370. 1890, May 22. PRIME-MINISTER SALISBURY TO MINISTER PAUNCEFOTE. It is an axiom of international maritime law that such action is only admissible in the case of piracy or in the pursuance of special international agreement. The principle has been universally admitted by jurists, and was very distinctly laid down by President Tyler in his special message to Congress, dated the 27th of February, 1843, when, after acknowledging the right to detain and search a vessel on suspicion of piracy, he goes on to say: "With this single exception, no nation has, in time of peace, any authority to detain the ships of another upon the high seas, on any pretext whatever, outside of the territorial jurisdiction." Now, the pursuit of seals in the open sea, under whatever circumstances, has never hitherto been considered as piracy by any civilized state. Nor, even if the United States had gone so far as to make the killing of fur-seals piracy by their municipal law, would this have justified them in punishing offenses against such law committed by any persons other than their own citizens outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. In the case of the slave trade, a practice which the civilized world has agreed to look upon with abhorrence, the right of arresting the vessels of another country is exercised only by special international agreement, and no one government has been allowed that general control of morals in this respect which Mr. Blaine claims on behalf of the United States in regard to seal-hunting. But Her Majesty's Government must question whether this pursuit can of itself be regarded as contra bonos mores, unless and until, for special reasons, it has been agreed by an international arrangement to forbid it. Fur-seals are indisputably animals feræ naturæ, and these have universally been regarded by jurists as res nullius until they are caught; no person, therefore, can have property in them until he has actually reduced them into possession by capture.. First, as to the alleged exclusive monopoly of Russia. Russia, at the instance of the Russian-American Fur Company, claimed in 1821 the pursuits of commerce, whaling, and fishing from Behring Straits to the fifty-first degree of north latitude, and not only prohibited all foreign vessels from landing on the coasts and islands of the above waters, but also prevented them from approaching within one hundred miles thereof, Mr. Quincy Adams wrote as follows to the United States minister in Russia : "The United States can admit no part of these claims; their right of navigation and fishing is perfect, and has been in constant exercise from the earliest times throughout the whole extent of the Southern Ocean, subject only to the ordinary exceptions and exclusions of the territorial jurisdictions." I now come to the statement that from 1867 to 1886 the possession was enjoyed by the United States with no interruption and no intrusion from any source. Her Majesty's Government can not but think that Mr. Blaine has been misinformed as to the history of the operations in Behring Sea during that period. The instances recorded in Inclosure 1 in this dispatch are sufficient to prove from official United States sources that from 1867 to 1886 British vessels were engaged at intervals in the fur-seal fisheries with the cognizance of the United States Government. Her Majesty's Government do not deny that if all sealing were stopped in Behring Sea except on the islands in possession of the lessees of the United States, the seal may increase and multiply at an even more extraordinary rate than at present, and the seal fishery on the island may become a monopoly of increasing value; but they cannot admit that this is sufficient ground to justify the United States in forcibly depriving other nations of any share in this industry in waters which, by the recognized law of nations, are now free to all the world.-Foreign Relations, 1890, pp. 420-423. 1890, May 29. SECRETARY BLAINE TO MINISTER I am instructed by the President to protest against the course of the British Government in authorizing, encouraging, and protecting vessels which are not only interfering with American rights in the Behring Sea, but which are doing violence as well to the rights of the civilized world. They are engaged in a warfare against seal life, disregarding all the regulations which lead to its protection, and committing acts which lead ultimately to its destruction.-Foreign Relations, 1890, p. 425. 1890, June 30. SECRETARY BLAINE TO MINISTER PAUNCEFOTE. Mr. Adams protested not against the ukase of Paul, but against the ukase of Alexander; not wholly against the ukase of Alexander, but only against his extended claim of sovereignty southward of the continent to the fifty-first degree north latitude. In short, Mr. Adams protested, not against the old possessions, but only against the new pretensions of Russia on the northwest coast of America—pretensions to territory claimed by the United States and frequented by her mariners since the peace of 1783. . . . It is very plain that Mr. Adams's phrase the continent of America," in his reference to Russia's posses |