348 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



North Sea. Tlie Straits of Gibraltar are less than 9 miles wide. The 

 chief entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is entirely surrounded 

 by British territory, is only about 50 miles in width. Behring Sea is 

 open on the north by the Straits, 36 miles wide, which form a passage- 

 way to the Arctic Ocean. On what grounds and after what modern 

 precedent we could set up a. claim to hold this great sea, with its wide 

 approaches, as a inare clausum, it is not easy to see. 



Our Government has never formally set up the claim that it is a 

 closed sea. Governor Boutwell, when Secretary of the Treasury, in 

 1872, speaking of intended expeditions of foreign sealers into Behring 

 Sea, said: 



I do not see that the United States would have the jurisdiction or power to drive 

 off parties going up there for that purpose, unless they made such an attempt within 

 a marine league of the shore. 



Congress, guided by the caution of certain Senators, in its Act of the 



2nd March, 1889, forbore to use language which might seem to apply 



the doctrine of mare clausum to Behring Sea. The House of Eepre- 



sentatives did insert in the Bill a section beginning as follows: 



95 _ Section 1956 of the Revised Statutes of the United States was intended to 

 iucliule and apply, and is hereby declared to include and apply, to all the 

 waters of iJehriug Sea in Alaska embraced within the boundary-lines menticmed and 

 described in the Treaty with Russia. 



The Senate disagreeing with the House on the adoption of this lan- 

 guage, a Coinmittee of Conference agreed to the phraseology as it now 

 stands in the Act: 



Section 1956 of the Revised Statutes of the United States is hereby declared to 

 include and apply to all the dominions of the United States in the waters of Beliring 

 Sea. ^ 



The President's Proclamation of the 21st March, 1889, merely recites 

 Section li)50 of the Kevised Statutes and the 3rd section of the Act of 

 the 2nd March, and gives warning against "violation of the laws of 

 the United States." But obviously neither the Act nor the ]^roclama- 

 tion was intended to declare the doctrine of marecJaMsvm. to be applica- 

 ble to J^.eliring Sea. They, merely affirm that we will exercise our 

 authority in the execution of a certain law wherever our dominion 

 extends in that sea. It is left to be determined, if need be, how far 

 that dominion extends. 



An argument for preventing the unrestrained hunting of seals in 

 Behring Sea which our late Minister to liussia, Mr. Lothrop, heard pre- 

 sented by Russians, is of interest. Briefly stated, it is this: The seal 

 fishery is the main resource of the people on the Asiatic shore of that 

 sea for gaining a livelihood. Every people has conceded to it the con- 

 trol of such part of the sea contiguous to its coasts as is essential to 

 the protection of the inhabitants.' The common rights to the open sea 

 must be enjoyed in ways conipiitible with the safety, and certainly with 

 the existence, of the people on its shores. Hence, the Russians should 

 control the seal fishery in their part of the sea. 



IsTo doubt the condition of tlie Siberians on that coast would present 

 a strong case for generous action on the part of foreigners in abstain- 

 ing from interference with their means of gaining a livelihood. By 

 common consent, out of regard to the hardships of their life, fishermen 

 are not disturbed in their i)ursnits in time of war. But caii the Rus- 

 sian argument, even if it has validity for the Siberians, be used by us? 

 We have witliout any scrni)Ie for half a century taken whales in the 

 seas adjacent to them. We can hardly assert with much plausibility 



