JURISDICTIONAL AND OTHER RIGHTS OVER BERING SEA. 31 



contra bonos mores, a pursuit which of necessity involves a serious and 

 permanent injury to the rights of the Government and people of the 

 United States. To establish this ground it is not necessary to argue 

 the question of the extent and nature of the sovereignty of this Gov- 

 ernment over the waters of the Behring Sea; it is not necessary to 

 explain, certainly not to define, the powers and privileges ceded by I lis 

 Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Russia in the treaty by which the 

 Alaskan territory was transferred to the United States. The weighty 

 considerations growing out of the acquisition of that territory, with 

 all the rights on land and sea inseparably connected therewith, may be 

 safely left out of view, while the grounds are set forth upon which this 

 Government rests its justification for the action complained of by Her 

 Majesty's Government. 



Mr. Blaine then proceeds to point out that long before the acquisi- 

 tion of Alaska by the United States the fur-seal industry had been 

 established by Russia upon the Pribilof Islands, and that while she 

 had control over them, her possession and enjoyment thereof were in 

 no way disturbed by other nations; that the United States, since the 

 cession of 18G7, had continued to carry on the industry, cherishing the 

 herd of fur-seals on those islands and enjoying the advantage thereof; 

 that in the year 1880, vessels, mostly Canadian, were fitted out for 

 the purpose of taking seals iu the open sea, and that the number 

 of vessels engaged in the work had continually increased; that they 

 engaged in an indiscriminate slaughter of the seals, very injurious to 

 the industry prosecuted by the United States, and threatening the ex- 

 termination, substantially, of the species. He insisted that the ground 

 upon which Her Majesty's Government was disposed to defend these 

 Canadian vessels, viz., that their acts of destruction were committed at a 

 distance of more than three miles from the shore line, was wholly insuf- 

 ficient; that to exterminate an animal useful to mankind was in 

 itself in a high degree immoral, besides being injurious to the interests 

 of the United States; that the "law of the sea is not lawlessness," and 

 that the liberty which it confers could not be " perverted to justify 

 acts which are immoral in themselves, and which inevitably tend to 

 results against the interests and against the welfare of mankind." 



It is, therefore, entirely clear that Mr. Blaine improved the first 

 occasion upon which he was called upon to refer to the subject, to place 

 the claims of the United States distinctly on the ground of a property 

 interest, which could not be interfered with by other nations upon the 

 high seas by practices which in themselves were essentially immoral 

 and contrary to the law of nature. 1 



•Mr. Blaine to Sir Julian Rauneefote, Case of the United States, Appendix, Vol. i 

 p. 200. 



