20 ORAL ARGUMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. PHELPS. 



been reading from is dated the 7th day of July, 1888. It was approved 

 by the Governor-Geiieral in Privy Council on the 14th of July, 1888 

 and it was transmitted by Lord Stanley of Preston to Lord Knutssford 

 on the 3rd of August 1888, and would be in the possession of the 

 British Foreign Office in about the usual time after that. 



The Tribunal here adjourned for a short time. 



Mr. Phelps. — My learned friend, Sir liichard Webster desires that 

 I should refer to another letter upon the same subject, which 1 had not 

 mentioned this morning. I do it with great pleasure, because it is by 

 no means my intention to deduce any conclusions from any part of this 

 correspondence which are not sustained by the whole of it. It is a 

 letter from Lord Salisbury to Sir Julian Pauncefote of the2Und October 

 1890, and it is in the 3rd British Appendix, page 18 of the second part. 

 The Tribunal will remember before I read from this letter, that the 

 correspondence I have been reading took place at, and immediately 

 following, the time when the Agreement between the two Governments 

 for a convention that I was speaking of took place. 



Senator Morgan.— In 1888? 



Mr. Phelps. — Yes, the letters on both sides. Now on the 22nd Octo- 

 ber 1890, Lord Salisbury writes to Sir Julian Pauncefote a letter which 

 is produced here, iu which, being pressed upon this subject, he gives 

 an explanation: 



I understand liis complaint — 



that is to say, in Mr. Blaine's correspondence — 



to be that, in a conversation with Mr. Phelps, reported by that gentleman in a 

 despatch dated the 25th February, 1888, I had assented to the American proposition 

 to establish, by mutual arrangement between the Governments interested, a close time 

 for fur-seals between the 15th April aud the Ist November iu each year, and between 

 160° west lonjiitude and 170 east longitude in the Behring's Sea; that I had under- 

 taken to cause an Act to be introduced in Parliament to give effect to this arrange- 

 ment as soon as it could be prepared, and that I subsequently receded from these 

 engagements. 



The conversation in question took place on the 22nd February 1888, and my own 

 record of it, written on the same day in a despatch to your predecessor, is as follows: 



Mr. Phelps then made a proposal on the basis embodied in Mr. Bayard's despatch 

 of the 7th February, a copy of whicli accompanies my previous despatch of this day's 

 date. Mr. Bayard there expresses the oj)inion that the only way of preventing the 

 destruction of the seals would be by concentrated action on the p.irt of the United 

 States, Great Britain, and other interested Powers, to prevent their citizens or sub- 

 jects from killing fur-seals with firearms or other destructive weapons north of 50° 

 north latitude, and between 160 west longitude and 170^^ east louiiitude from Green- 

 wich, during the period intervening between the 15th April aud the 1st November. 

 I expressed to Mr. Phelps the entire readiness of Her Majesty's Government to join 

 in an Agreement with Russia and the United States to establish a close time for seal 

 fishing north of some latitude to be fixed. 



And he subsequently discusses that at a length I need not read, 

 speaking very kindly of the United States Minister and giving his views 

 which are before you. 



I am very glad that this letter, as it is in the case, where it would 

 naturally encounter aud probably has before encountered the eye of the 

 tribunal, should have been brought to my attention by my learned 

 friend on the other side. I ai)peal from that letter which is not after 

 all very different from what appeared from the former correspondence — 

 I appeal from Lord Salisbury's recollection in 1890, to what he said in 

 the rei)eated letters I read this morning, written immediately after that 

 agreement was made. If the Tribunal take the trouble, which I will 

 not stop to do, to compare the letters which I have read this morning 

 from the British Government as well as from the re])resentative of the 

 American Government with the subsequent recollection of Lord Salis- 



