Z8 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



These two subjects may appear to have been to some extent con- 

 founded, or blended, in the minds of the negotiators of the treaty, for 

 the four questions now about to be considered appear, at first view, to 

 embrace both. The Tribunal is called upon to determine, on the one 

 hand, what exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea Russia has asserted 

 and exercised, which may not unreasonably be viewed as referring 

 to the exercise of the sovereign power of legislation over that sea, 

 tantamount to an extension of territorial sovereignty. 



It is also called upon to determine what exclusive right in the "seal 

 fisheries" in Bering Sea Russia asserted and exercised prior to the 

 cession to the United States — a totally different question — although a 

 decision of it, affirming the exclusive right, might carry with it, as a 

 consequence, the right to protect such fisheries by a reasonable 

 exercise of national power anywhere upon the seas where such exer- 

 cise might be necessary. 



And yet it is not probable that the negotiators, even if the two ques- 

 tions were to them distinctly in view, really intended to assign a dis- 

 tinct and separate importance to the first. The real controversy was 

 upon the second, and the first was intended to be included, only so far 

 as it might have a bearing upon the second. This is quite manifest 

 from the circumstance that in neither of the four questions is the first 

 of the two rights or claims stated alone and apart from the other; and 

 still more from the language of the second question, which clearly im- 

 plies that the claim of a right to exercise authority on the sea in defense 

 of a property interest is the one principally intended to be submitted. 

 The language is as follows: " How far were these claims of jurisdiction 

 as to the seal fisheries recognized and conceded by Great Britain," This 

 language clearly shows that the Russian claims of exclusive jurisdic- 

 tion designed to be submitted to the Tribunal were such only as as- 

 serted a right to protect the sealing interest of Russia by action upon 

 Bering Sea. And there is nothing in the diplomatic correspondence 

 which led up to the treaty disclosing any assertion on the part of the 

 United States to the effect that Russia had ever gained any right of 

 exclusive legislation over that sea. On the contrary, such assertion had 

 been emphatically disclaimed. 



It is by no means intended in what has been said that the question 

 what authority on Bering Sea, or, to use the ambiguous word, what 

 "jurisdiction" in Bering Sea, Russia had asserted and exercised in 

 relation to her sealing interests, is unimportant. That question, although 



