JURISDICTIONAL AND OTHER RIGHTS OVER BERING SEA. 33 



On the 30th of June, 1890, Mr. Blaine addressed a note to Sir Julian 

 Pauncefote in which he referred to Lord Salisbury's note, above men- 

 tioned, of May 22, and especially to the passage quoted in it from the 

 communication of Mr. John Quincy Adams to the American minister 

 in Eussia, in which the pretensions advanced by Eussia in the ukase 

 of 1821 were resisted. He endeavored, in an argument of some length, 

 to show that the claim set up by Eussia in 1821 to a peculiar jurisdic- 

 tion had not been surrendered by the treaties of 1821 and 1825 with the 

 United States and Great Britain, respectively, so far as related to 

 Bering Sea, and had not been otherwise abandoned. He insisted that 

 the ukase of 1821, while not designed to declare the Bering Sea to be 

 mare clausum, assumed to exclude, for certain purposes at least, other 

 nations from a space on the high seas to the distance of 100 miles from 

 the shore, and that this pretension on the part of Eussia had never 

 been surrendered or abandoned, and had been, in substance, acquiesced 

 in by other nations, and in particular by Great Britain. 1 



The views thus expressed by Mr. Blaine, which were really not essen- 

 tial to the main controversy, and were drawn from him by the reference 

 which Lord Salisbury had made to the Eussian ukase of 1821, and the 

 subsequent protests, negotiations, and treaties between Eussia and the 

 United States and Great Britain, respectively, were responded to in a 

 note from Lord Salisbury to Sir Julian Pauncefote of August 2, 1890. 3 

 In this note his lordship considered the subject at much length, and 

 argued that, on general principles of international law, no nation can 

 rightfully claim jurisdiction at sea beyond a marine league from the 

 coast. This general principle, so far as it is one, had never been denied 

 by Mr. Blaine, his position being that there might be, and in some in- 

 stances were, cases which called for exceptions from the operation of 

 the general rule, so far, at least, as to give a nation a right to exclude, 

 for certain purposes, foreign vessels from a belt of the sea much wider 

 than three miles. 



On the 17th of December, 1890, Mr. Blaine, in a note to Sir Julian 

 Pauncefote, 3 referred to the note of Lord Salisbury, last mentioned, and 

 reasserted his position. The controversy respecting the claims of 

 Eussia now became, substantially, whether, in the treaties of 1824 

 and 1825 between the United States and Great Britain, respectively, 



'Case of the United States, Appendix, Vol. I, p. 224. 

 3 Case of the United States, Appendix, Vol. i, p. 242. 

 3 Case of the United States, Appendix, Vol. i, p. 263. 

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