88 ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 



Tliat, by virtue of the Treaty of Cession, the United States acquired complete title 

 to all that portion of Beliriujr Sea situated within the limits prescribed by tlic Treaty. 



The Coiumittee herewith report a bill making necessary amendments of the exist- 

 ing law relating to these subjects, and recommend its passage. 



It tlieii i)rocee(Is to describe the amendments, as declaring the true 

 intent and meaning; of section 1956. That, tlie Tribunal will remember, 

 is the section wliich prohibits the killing of any otter, mink, marten, 

 sable, or fiir-seal or other fiir-bearing animal within the limits of Alaska 

 territory or in the waters thereof: 



That section 1956 was intended to include and apply, and is hereby declared to 

 include and apply, to all the icaiers of Jlehrbuj Sea in Alaska emhraced tvithin the 

 honndarij -linen mentioned and described in the Treaty with Russia, dated the 30th March, 

 A. D. 1X67, by which the Territory of Alaska was ceded to the United States; and it 

 shall be the duty of the President at a timely season in each year to issue his Procla- 

 mation, and cause the same to be published for one mouth in at least one newspaper 

 published at each United States port of entry on the Pacific coast, warning all per- 

 sons against entering said Territory and waters for the purpose of violating the pro- 

 visions of sai<l section; and he shall also cause one or more vessels of the United 

 States to diligently cruize said waters and arrest all persons, and seize all vessels 

 found to be. or to have been, engaged in any violation of the laws of the United 

 States therein. 



The Bill, Mr. President, did not pass the House of Representatives, 

 but this section was added by the House as an amendment to a Bill for 

 the jirotection of the salmon fisheries of Alaska, which originated in 

 the Senate. 



The Senate however refused to accept the amendment of the other 

 House, and the Bill was accordingly referred to a Conference of the 

 Houses, and the section, as finally modified and adopted in the Act of 

 the 2nd March 1889, reads as follows : 



This is as it stands in the book at page 99, and it will be observed that 

 it did not i)ass the legislative bodies and ultimately become law in the 

 terms in which it was recommended: those terms being that it should 

 apply " to all the waters of Behring Sea in Alaska embraced within the 

 boundary-lines mentioned and described in the Treaty with Russia ". 

 The earlier statute runs thus: " The laws . . . are extended to and over 

 all the main-land, islands and waters of the territory ceded to the United 

 States by the Treaty with Russia"; and the section as it was actually 

 passed runs as follows: 



That S. 1956. . . is hereby declared to include and apply to all the dominion of the 

 United States in the waters of Behring Sea. 



]S"ow I really have to ask, what was the reason of the change? Was 

 it intended that the change should mean anything, or was it intended 

 that it should mean nothing? 



Was it intended to be left in a position in which, without assert- 

 826 ing dominion over aJl the waters of Behring Sea, it should yet be 

 so vaguely framed that the executive authority would be entitled 

 to invoke an interpretation of it as if it included all the waters of the 

 Behring Sea as part of the dominion belonging to Alaska territory ? In 

 this discussion also one of your Tribunal took part, and, as the Tribunal 

 would be prepared to expect, a sensible part. First of all, instead of 

 being a substantive Act dealing with this question, it is smuggled into 

 (if I may use the expression) an Act dealing with an entirely different 

 matter— an Act for the protection of the Salmon Fisheries of Alaska; 

 and wlieu it came up, Mr. Senator Morgan (I now refer to page 249 of 

 vol. Ill of the Appendix to the Case of Great Britain) says : 



I wish to say just this: That in the Report made by the Committee the rights of 

 the Government of the United States were not considered, and not intended to be 



