ORAL ARGUMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. PHELPS. 281 



stratioTi, as I respectfully claim, of the proposition I set out with, and 

 which is the great underlying proposition in my argument in this case: 

 that the right which is contentled for on the i)art of these individual 

 and si)eeulative Canadians and renegade Americans and which they 

 claim as their justitication is the right of extermination. 



There is no other view to take of it. It is not the right to share with 

 us, — that right would be open to discussion if the United States have 

 no property interest, — it is the right of extermination, as a feature of 

 the freedom of the sea. My learned friends say that the right of the 

 ITnited States cannot be maintained without infringing tlie freedom of 

 the sea; they talk about the right of search, wlii(;li has nothing to do 

 with this case; the right of seizure, which is not before this Tribunal;" 

 but which if it is to be resorted to in self-deience is exactly the right 

 and the only right that has been administered ever since there was a 

 law of the sea in protection of every interest that a nation has to pro- 

 tect. There is nothing else that can be done except the resort to 

 measures which are more stringent and more severe, and which the 

 usage of nations does not warrant. The right of extermination is then 

 the question in this case. I have assumed it to be so in what I have 

 said on the law points, I have proved it to be so, I respectfully suggest, 

 upon the facts. 



[The Tribunal then adjourned for a short time.] 



Mr. Phelps. — I come now, Sir, to the oidy remaining topic upon 

 which I shall address the Tribunal, the subject of Kegulations, in case 

 the decision should be such as to require its consideration by the Tri- 

 bunal. I alluded in the beginning of my argument, to the extraordi- 

 nary position, as it seems to me, that Great Britain occupies upon this 

 subject. I pointed out, by reading from letters in the correspondence 

 that preceded the creation of this Tribunal and the making of this 

 Treaty, the position that Great Britain took. I showed, in the first 

 place, that at the very outset of the negotiations, in the first interview 

 that ever took place between Lord Salisbury, the British minister of 

 Foreign Affairs, and the United States representative, a convention 

 was agreed upou substantially, the terms of which you will remember. 



I do not know that 1 can give now the latitude and longitude, but 

 you will remember that its limits were designated on the map — how' 

 large they were to the South into the sea, and how large they were east 

 and west. That fell through upon the remonstrance of Canada. It was 

 never withdrawn by the British Government. It was never recalled, 

 but it drifted along through correspondence (that I shall not allude to 

 again) until the United States became satisfied and the event showed 

 they were right, that it would not be carried into effect. It was sug- 

 gested that the Convention thus agreed to by Lord Salisbury — the close 

 time being from the 15tii April to tlie 1st ISTovember, subsequently modi- 

 fied to the loth October — was made because Lord Salisbury did not 

 understand the subject. Quite apart from the consideration that he 

 would not have acted and never did act — upon a subject he does not 

 understand, after he had heard from Canada officially, and more than 

 once as the correspondence shows, and after tlie light that was thrown 

 upon it, not only by the American Government, but by the subsequent 

 communications from British cruisers, Lord Salisbury never took the 

 ground that he would have taken as a frank and honourable man, if 

 it had been true that he had been drawn into an agreement in igno- 

 rance of material facts. He never put himself on that ground. The 

 last communication from Lord Salisbury on that subject to the Ameri- 

 can Government and to the American Minister, both orally and in 



