JURISDICTIONAL AND OTHER RIGHTS OVER BERING SEA. 29 



in no sense a vital one, has a material bearing, and was designed to be 

 embraced by the arbitration. The question whether property rights 

 and interests exist, is one thing; the question what the nation to whieh 

 they belong may, short of an exercise of the sovereign power of exclu- 

 sive legislation, do by way of protecting them, is another; and both are 

 by the treaty submitted to the Tribunal. Should it appear that Russia 

 had for nearly a century actually asserted and exercised an authority 

 in Bering Sea for the purpose of protecting her sealing interests, and 

 that Great Britain had never resisted or disputed it, it would be quite 

 too late for her now to draw the reasonableness of it into question. 



A studied effort is made in the Case of Great Britain to make it 

 appear that the United States have shifted their ground from time to 

 time in relation to the subject of this controversy, by first asserting 

 that Bering Sea was mare clausum; then by setting up an exclusive 

 jurisdiction over an area with a radius of 100 miles around the Pribilof 

 Islands; and, lastly, by abandoning both those positions, and asserting 

 a property interest in the herds of seals. This appears from the 

 deliberate statement which closes the Seventh Chapter of the Case of 

 Great Britain, as follows: 



The facts stated in this chapter show: 



That the original ground upon which the vessels seized in 1886 and 

 18S7 were condemned, was that Bering Sea was a mare clausum, an 

 inland sea, and as such had been conveyed, in part, by Russia to the 

 United States. 



That this ground was subsequently entirely abandoned, but a claim 

 was then made to exclusive jurisdiction over 100 miles from the coast- 

 line of the United States' territory. 



That subsequently a further claim has been set up to the effect that 

 the United States have a property in and a right of protection over fur- 

 seals in nonterritorial waters. 



It will be necessary, in order to expose the error of this statement, to 

 briefly review the several stages of the controversy, and draw atten- 

 tion to the grounds upon which the Government of the United States 

 lias taken its positions. 



It was in September, 1886, that the attention of that Government was 

 first called by Sir L. S. Sackville- West, Her Majesty's minister at Wash- 

 ington, to a reported seizure in Bering Sea of three British sealing 

 vessels by a United States cruiser. Information only respecting the 

 affair was at first asked for, and considerable delay occurred in procuring 

 it; but, prior to September, 1887, copies of the records from the United 

 States District Courtof Alaska of the seizure and condemnation of these 

 vessels had been furnished to the British Government, It apx)eared 



