Mr. Edwardes to Mr. Blaine.

WASHINGTON, September 12, 1889.

MY DEAR MR. BLAINE: I should be very much obliged if you would kindly let me know when I may expect an answer to the request of Her Majesty's Government, which I had the honor of communicating to you in my note of the 24th of August, that instructions may be sent to Alaska to prevent the possibility of the seizure of British ships in Behring Sea. Her Majesty's Government are earnestly awaiting the reply of the United States Government on this subject, as the recent reports of seizures having taken place are causing much excitement both in England and in Canada.

I remain, etc.,

Mr. Blaine answers that:

H. G. EDWARDEs.

Mr. Blaine to Mr. Edwardes.

BAR HARBOR, September 14, 1889.

SIR I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your personal note of the 12th instant, written at Washington, in which you desire to know when you may expect an answer to the request of Her Majesty's Government, “that instructions may be sent to Alaska to prevent the possibility of the seizure of British ships in Behring Sea.

I had supposed that my note of August 24 would satisfy Her Majesty's Government of the President's earnest desire to come to a friendly agreement touching all matters at issue detween the two Governments in relation to Behring Sea, and I had further supposed that your mention of the official instruction to Sir Julian Pauncefote to proceed, immediately after his arrival in October, to a full discussion of the question, removed all necessity of a preliminary correspondence touching its merits.

Referring more particularly to the question of which you repeat the desire of your Government for an answer, I have the honor to inform you that a categorical response would have been and still is impracticable unjust to this Government, and misleading to the Government of Her Majesty. It was therefore the judgment of the President that the whole subject could more wisely be remanded to the formal discussion so near at hand which Her Majesty's Government has proposed, and to which the Government of the United States has cordially assented.

It is proper, however, to add that any instruction sent to Behring Sea at the time of your original request, upon the 24th of August, would have failed to reach those waters before the proposed departure of the vessels of the United States.

I have, etc.,

JAMES G. BLAINE.

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These letters, it will certainly be agreed, are diplomatic party pressing for an answer to a question, and the other gently deferring it and looking to a period when a more satisfactory discussion should be brought on.

Sir Charles Russell. The next letter from Lord Salisbury is important.

Mr. Carter. I have not marked it as important, but if you think so Sir Charles, I will be glad to read it.

Sir Charles Russell. I wish you would. It is on the same page, 197.

Mr. Carter. I will do so. It is from Lord Salisbury to Mr. Edwardes and was left at the Department of State.

The Marquis of Salisbury to Mr Edwardes.

[Left at the Department of State by Mr Edwardes.]

FOREIGN OFFICE, October 2, 1889.

SIR At the time when the seizures of British ships hunting seals in Behring's Sea during the years 1886 and 1887 were the subjects of discussion the Minister of the United States made certain overtures to Her Majesty's Government with respect to the institution of a close time for the seal fishery, for the purpose of preventing the extirpation of the species in that part ot the world. Without in any way admitting that considerations of this order could justify the seizure of vessels which were transgressing no rule of international law, Her Majesty's Government were very ready to agree that the subject was one deserving of the gravest attention on the part of all the governments interested in those waters.

The Russian Government was disposed to join in the proposed negotiations, but 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.

Her Majesty's Government are 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 Her Majesty's representative will be furnished with the requisite instructions in case the Secretary of State should be willing to enter upon the discussion.

You will read this dispatch and my dispatch No. 205, of this date, to the Secretary of State, and, if he should desire it, you are authorized to give him copies of them.

I am, etc.,

SALISBURY.

Yes, it is quite important, and I am obliged to my learned friend for the suggestion that it be read.

These demands by the British Government, occasioned by the new seizures, and this sort of diplomatic correspondence having been begun, during which preliminaries the new Government of the United States was occupied in considering the proper attitude to be taken, Mr. Blaine, finally, on the 22nd of January, 1890, addressed Sir Julian Pauncefote and delivered to him the result of the consideration and reflection which President Harrison had given to the subject. This is on the 22nd of January, 1890.

Sir Charles Russell. If you will pardon me one moment you have only read one of those two despatches to which I referred. One was the one I requested, and the other immediately followed it.

Mr. Carter. I did not intend to read it unless you desired it. Sir Charles Russell. Not at all. Do not go to that trouble. Mr. Carter. I now read the letter of Mr. Blaine, January 22, 1890:

Mr. Blaine to Sir Julian Pauncefote.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, January 22, 1890.

SIR Several weeks have elapsed since I had the honor to receive through the hands of Mr. Edwardes copies of two dispatches from Lord Salisbury complaining of the course of the United States revenue-cutter Rush in intercepting Canadian vessels sailing under the British flag and engaged in taking fur seals in the waters of the Behring Sea.

Subjects which could not be postponed have engaged the attention of this Department and have rendered it impossible to give a formal answer to Lord Salisbury until the present time.

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 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, cetrainly 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 the 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 can not 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 fime 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 Government. 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 had also been demonstrated in a wide sense by the well-nigh 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.

The killing of seals in the open sea involves the destruction of the female in common with the male. The slaughter of the female seal is reckoned as

an immediate loss of three seals, besides the future loss of the whole number which the bearing seal may produce in the successive years of life. The destruction which results from killing seals in the open sea proceeds, therefore, by a ratio which constantly and rapidly increases, and insures the total extermination of the species within a very brief period. It has thus become known that the only proper time for the slaughter of seals is at the season when they betake themselves to the land, because the land is the only place where the necessary discrimination can be made as to the age and sex of the seal. It would seem, then, by fair reasoning, that nations not possessing the territory upon which seals can increase their numbers by natural growth, and thus afford an annual supply of skins for the use of mankind, should refrain from the slaughter in open sea where the destruction of the species is sure and swift.

After the acquisition of Alaska the Government of the United States, through competent agents working under the direction of the best experts, gave careful attention to the improvement of the seal fisheries. Proceeding by a close obedience to the laws of nature, and rigidly limiting the number to be annually slaughtered, the Government succeeded in increasing the total number of seals and adding correspondingly and largely to the value of the fisheries. In the course of a few years of intelligent and interesting experiment the number that could be safely slaughtered was fixed at 100,000 annually. The Company to which the administration of the fisheries was intrusted by a lease from this Government has paid a rental of $ 50,000 per annum, and in addition thereto $2.62 per skin for the total number taken. The skins were regularly transported to London to be dressed and prepared for the markets of the world, and the business had grown so large that the earnings of English laborers, since Alaska was transferred to the United States, amount in the aggregate to more than $ 12,000,000.

The entire business was then conducted peacefully, lawfully, and profitably-profitably to the United States for the rental was yielding a moderate interest on the large sum which this Government had paid for Alaska, including the rights now at issue; profitably to the Alaskan Company, which, under governmental direction and restriction, had given unwearied pains to the care and development of the fisheries; profitably to the Aleuts, who were receiving a fair pecuniary reward for their labors, and were elevated from semisavagery to civilization and to the enjoyment of schools and churches provided for their benefit by the Government of the United States; and, last of all, profitably to a large body of English laborers who had constant employment and received good wages.

This, in brief, was the condition of the Alaska fur-seal fisheries down to the year 1886. The precedents, customs, and rights had been established and enjoyed, either by Russia or the United States, for nearly a century. The two nations were the enly powers that owned a foot of land on the continents that bordered, or on the islands included within, the Behring waters where the seals resort to breed. Into this peaceful and secluded field of labor, whose benefits were so equitably shared by the native Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands, by the United States, and by England, certain Canadian vessels in 1886 asserted their right to enter, and by their ruthless course to destroy the fisheries and with them to destroy also the resulting industries which are so valuable. The Government of the United States at once proceeded to check this movement, which, unchecked, was sure to do great and irreparable harm. It was cause of unfeigned surprise to the United States that Her Majesty's Government should immediately interfere to defend and encourage (surely to 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-developed in such a manner as not to interfere with the public rights or the private industries of any other people or any other person.

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?

So great has been the injury to the fisheries from the irregular and destructive slaughter of seals in the open waters of the Behring Sea by Canadian vessels, that whereas the Government had allowed 100,000 to be taken annually for a series of years, it is now compelled to reduce the number to 60,000. If four years of this violation of natural law and neighbor's rights has reduced the annual slaughter of seal by 40 per cent, it is easy to see how short a period will be required to work the total destruction of the fisheries. 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 3 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 20 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 3 miles from shore.

There are, according to scientific authority, "great colonies of fish" on the "ewfoundland banks. " These colonies resemble the seats of great populations on land. They remain 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 manner 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 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 3 mile line?

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Why are not the two cases parallel? The Canadian vessels are engaged in the taking of fur seal in a manner that destroys the power of reproduction and insures the extermination of the species. In exterminating the species an article useful to mankind is totally destroyed in order that temporary and immoral gain may be acquired by a few persons. By the employment of dynamite on the banks it is not probable that the total destruction of fish could be accomplished, but a serious diminution of a valuable food for man might assuredly result. Does Her Majesty's Government seriously maintain that the law of nations is powerless to prevent such violation of the common