BEHRING SEA TROUBLES WITH GREAT BRITAIN

Official Communication of Secretary Blaine to British Minister Pauncefote.

WAR between Great Britain and the United States over Behring Sea sealing rights was narrowly averted by the diplomatic negotiations of 1890 here recorded, which resulted in the modus vivendi between Britain and the States signed June 15, 1891. Canada was at the bottom of the trouble, Canadian an sealers doing such wholesale poaching that in 1889 several Canadian vessels were seized. Thereupon Great Britain made a threat of war against the United States if such seizures continued.

Arbitration was resorted to, and what is known as the Blaine-Pauncefote Treaty provided for a tribunal which met at Paris in 1893 and framed regulations to prohibit all pelagic sealing within 60 miles of the Pribylov rookeries. The restrictions were never strictly observed, and by 1900 the Canadian sealing fleet numbered 33 vessels, with a catch of over 35,000 seals a year. In 1911 an international agreement was entered into to save the seals from extinction.

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 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 has 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.

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 stationary, having a limited range of water in which to live and die. In these great 4. 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.

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."