ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 19 



cpnipensatiouto those avIio have suft'e red in corisequeuce, and issnc inimodiate instruc- 

 tions to their uaval othcers which will prevent a recurrence of these regrettahle 

 incidents. 

 I am, etc., Salisbury. 



Lord Salisbury tlius reiterated the position which had been taken 

 that the United States Groveriiment had no anthority to enforce its 

 municipal hiws u])on any part of the seas outside of the ordinary tliree 

 mile limit; aud in support of tliat position he referred to the action of 

 the American Government in 18:i2 protesting against pretensious on 

 the part of liussia to exercise what the United States Government 

 then seemed to think w^ere acts of sovereignty over these same seas; 

 and his argument was, that the United States Government would 

 hardly ])retend now to exercise jurisdictional rights which, when 

 asserted by Russia so many years ago, they protested against so vigor- 

 ously. It will be observed that in this letter Lord Salisbury makes no 

 allusion to any supposed question of property. He makes no allusion 

 to the industry carried on upon the Pribilof Islands of guarding these 

 seals, and i)reserving them for the uses of commerce. He makes no 

 allusion to the question whether pelagic sealing is right or wrong in 

 itself; but seems to consider that, Whether right or wrong, and'whether 

 there is any property interest or not, the United States had no right 

 to capture a vessel upon the high seas, because that would be an attempt 

 to enforce their municipal laws there. He puts himself ui)()U the ground — 

 not an unnatural one at all under the circumstances, in view of this 

 record of an American Tribunal of a libel upon a British vessel based 

 upon an asserted violation of American law — that American municipal 

 law, which is the sole ground, as he supposes, of the taking of the 

 vessels, cannot be enforced ui)on the high seas, aud has no authority 

 there, and he cites iri favor of that position the prior action of the 

 American Government. 



At this time, information of the facts having reached both Govern- 

 ments, and the British Government having made a demand, and Lord 

 Salisbury having put himself upon this ground, the question arose with 

 the American Go^'ernment Avhat it Avas best to do. What was the situa- 

 tion? Here was its property, its industry, as it supposed — carried on 

 for a century in the face of the whole world, and hitherto unmolested 

 by the world — an industry benclicial to itself, and equally beneticial to 

 the rest of mankind; that industry and the herd of seals upon which 

 it rested were threatened with certain destruction, as it was viewed by 

 the American Government, by this practice of pelagic sealing. Efforts 

 had been made to arrest it by an enforcement of the American statute, 

 which effort had been exerted against both American and British 

 vessels. They were met, so far as Great Britain was concerned, with 

 protest, on the ground that it was an exercise of authority whicli the 

 United States did not have over the high seas. What was the United 

 States Government to do under those circumstances? There was this 

 comijlete and perfect property, as it supposed, in the seals. There was 

 this destructive character of pelagic sealing, a manifest, indisputa- 

 ble wrong in itself] as it appeared to the Government of the United 

 States, and a wrong, too, destructive of one of its own interests, and, 

 therefore, there must be a right^ somewhere and somehow, to arrest 

 the further progress of that wrong. The steps taken to do it had 

 excited this protest upon the part of Great Britain, and undoubtedly 

 did involve the exercise of an exceptional authority on the high seas. 



The exigency might have been met in various ways. Mr. Bayard 

 might have asserted the authority of the United States to repress this 



