70 ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 



troversy upon this. He was not very cautions in tliat particular, and 

 allowed an expression to fall from him which the quickness of my 

 learned friend Sir Charles Kussell seized upon the other day. It is 

 dated the 17th of December, 1890, and in it he says this: 



Sir Charles Kussell. Are you going to read this at length ? 



Mr. Carter. No, I am not. 



Sir Charles Russell. If so, it will be necessary to read the others. 



Mr. Carter. Oh no: far from it. I am only going to read a few 

 lines. This is the passage to which I designed to call the attention of 

 the arbitrators: 



If Great Britain can maintain her position that the Bchring Sea at the time of the 

 treaties with Russia of 1824 and 1825 was included in the Pacific Ocean, the Govern- 

 ment of the United States has no well-grounded complaint against her. If, on the 

 other haiad, this GovcnMuuent can i>rove lieyond all doubt that the Behrlng Sea, at 

 the date of the treaties, was understood by the three signatory Rowers to be a sepa- 

 rate body of water, and was not included in the phrase " Pacific Ocean," then tlie 

 American Case against Great Britain is complete and undeniable. 



The extraordinary thing in that observation and what I desire to 

 call to the attention of the learned Arbitrators is this: Mr. Blaine in 

 his first note to Sir Julian Pauncefote stating the position which the 

 United States took in reference to this controversy and the grounds 

 upon which it based its claims to prohibit pelagic sealing in Bering 

 Sea, dismissed from consideration altogether this question of Russian 

 authority and Russian pretentions, or any right derived by the United 

 States from Russian authority or Russian pretensions. He then pro- 

 ceeded to put the controversy upon grounds of essential right, setting 

 forth the lawful and useful cliaracter of the industry carried on by the 

 United States upon the Pribilof Islands — an industry useful to them- 

 selves and useful to mankind — setting forth the destructive nature of 

 pelagic seaHng as carried on by these Canadian sealers and its inde- 

 fensibility upon moral grounds, that it was an indisputable wrong, and, 

 being injurious to property interests of the United States, that the 

 latter power was clothed with full authority to prevent the commission 

 of that wrong. Those were his grounds. Here, somewhat incautiously, 

 he has abandoned that view, and chooses to say now that if the Gov- 

 ernment of Great Britain can maintain its jiosition in respect to the 

 meaning of "Pacific Ocean", then the United States has no well 

 grouiuled complaint against her. 



Senator Morgan. Mr. Carter, if you will allow me to interrupt you 

 just there, I think Mr. Blaine deserves some vindication. 



Mr. Carter. I am going to vindicate him. 



Senator Morgan. I hope you will. On the 29th day of April 1890, 

 preceding by several months this letter from which you have been 

 reading, written by Mr. Blaine, the British Government, through Sir 

 Julian Pauncefote, sent to Mr. Blaine a draft convention, from which I 

 will read the preamble : 



The Government of Russia and of tlie United States having represented to the 

 Government of Great Britain tlie urgency of regulating by means of an international 

 agreement the fur-seal fishery in Behring sea, ithe sea of Okhotsk and the adjoining 

 waters for the preservation of the fur-seal species in the North Pacific Ocean. 



Making a distinction there l)etween Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk 

 ami N(U"tli Pacific Ocean. I will not read the whole preamble, but it 

 seems to me that jMr. Blaine had at the time he wrote the letter upon 

 which yon are commenting an acknowledgnient from the British Gov- 

 ernment that there was a distinction between the Bering Sea and the 

 Sea of Okhotsk and the North Pacific Ocean j but I think he was not 



