55 



a mode which in view of Great Britniii's assumption of power over tlie 

 open ocean she can not with consistency decline. (Ireat Britain pre- 

 scribed 8 leagues at St. Helena; but the obvious necessities in the 

 Bering- Sea will, on the basis of this precedent, justify 20 leagues for 

 the protection of the American seal fisheries. 



"The United States desires only such control over a limited extent of 

 the waters in the Bering- Sea, for a jKirt of each year, as will be suffi- 

 cient to insure the protection of the fur seal fisheries, already injured, 

 possibly, to an irreparable extent by the intrusion of Canadian vessels, 

 sailing- with the encouragement of Great Britain and protected by her 

 flag. The gravest wrong is committed when (as in many instances is 

 the case) American citizens, refusing obedience to the laws of their own 

 country, have gone into partnership with the British flag and engaged 

 in the destruction of the seal fisheries which belong to the United 

 States. So general, so notorious, and so shamelessly avowed has this 

 practice become that last season, according to the report of the Ameri- 

 can consul at Victoria, when the intruders assembled at Unalaska 

 on the 4th of July, previous to entering Bering Sea, the day was 

 celebrated in a patriotic and spirited manner by the American citizens, 

 who at the time were protected by the British flag in their violation 

 of the laws of their own country. 



"With such agencies as these, devised by the Dominion of Canada, 

 and protected by the flag of Great Britain, American rights and inter- 

 ests have, within the past four years, been damaged to the extent of 

 millions of dollars, with no corresx)onding gain to those who caused 

 the loss. * * * 



"The repeated assertions that the Government of the United States 

 demands that the Bering Sea be pronounced /Harec/fmsMm are with- 

 out foundation. The Government has never claimed it and never 

 desired it. It expressly disavows it. At the same time the United 

 States does not lack abundant authority, according to the ablest expo- 

 nents of international law, for holding a small section of the Bering 

 Sea for the protection of the fur seals. Controlling a comi^aratively 

 restricted area of water for that one specific purpose is by no means 

 the equivalent of declaring the sea, or any part thereof, mare clausum. 

 Nor is it by any means so serious an obstruction as Great Britain 

 assumed to make it in the South Atlantic, nor so groundless an inter- 

 ference with the common law of the sea as is maintained by British 

 authority to-day in the Indian Ocean." U. S. Case, Vol. I, Apj)., 263, 284^ 

 286, 



