ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 71 



quite out of the line of reason, to say the least of it, in claiming that 

 there was a distinction which had been maintained perhaps for many 

 years. 



Mr. Carter. It may be that the British Government had acknowl- 

 edged the difference of the character in question; but I hardly think 

 the Government of Great Britain intended to acknowledge any such 

 difference as that. I do not so interpret it. But, in the next place, 

 whether they acknowledged it or not, I think it was — if I may be so 

 bold as to offer a criticism — I ought, perhax)s, not to — but nevertheless 

 it seems to me it was — a piece of imprudence in Mr. Blaine to abandon 

 the ground which he at first assumed, in consequence of the confidence 

 which he felt in the new position he was taking upon this question of 

 the pretensions to Bering Sea. He might have argued the question of 

 the rights of the United States as acquired from Eussia. It would not 

 have affected that argument at all. There was no occasion whatever 

 for an apparent abandonment of the ground which he had already taken 

 in his first letter to Sir Julian Pauncefote. 



Singularly enough, however, in this very same letter, towards the end 

 of it, he again re-asserts his original ground. Near the close of the 

 letter, in the last paragrai)h, on page 286, Mr. Blaine thus writes: 



The repeated assertions that the Government of the United States demands that 

 the Behring Sea be i>ronoiiiiced mare claiisum, are without foundation. The Govern- 

 ment has never claimed it and never desired it. It expressly disavows it. At the 

 same time the United States does not lack ahnndant anthority, according to the 

 ablest exponents of international law, for holding a small section of the J^ehring 

 Sea for the protection of the fnr seals. Controlling a comparatively restricted area 

 of water for that one specific pnrpose is by no means the equivalent of declaring 

 the sea, or any part thereof, viare clausum. Nor is it by any means so serious an 

 obstruction as Great Britain assumed to make in the South Atlantic, nor so ground- 

 less an interference with the common law of the sea as is maintained by British 

 authority to-day in the Indian Ocean. The President does not, however, desire the 

 long postponement which an examination of legal authorities from Ulpian to Phil- 

 limore and Kent would Involve. He finds his own views well expressed by Mr. 

 Phelps, our late minister to England, when, after failing to secure a just arrangement 

 ■with Great Britain touching the seal fisheries, he wrote the following in his closing 

 commiinication to his own Government, September 12, 1888: 



"Much learning has been expended ux)on the discussion of the abstract question of 

 the right of maw clausum. I do not conceive it to bea]q)licableto the present case. 



"Here is a v.aluable fishery, and a large and, if properly managed, jjermaneut 

 industry, the property of the nations on whose shores it is carried on. It is proposed 

 by the colony of a foreign nation, in defiance of the joint remonstrance of all the coun- 

 tries interested, to destroy this business by the indiscriminate slaughter and exter- 

 mination of the animals in cjuestion, in the open neighboring sea, during the period 

 of gestation, when the common dictates of humanity ought to protect them, were 

 there no interest at all involved. And it is suggested that we are prevented from 

 defending ourselves against such depredations because the sea at a certain distance 

 from the coast is free. 



"The same line of argument would take under its protection piracy and the slave 

 trade when prosecuted in the open sea, or would justify one nation in destroying the 

 commerce of another by placing dangerous obstructions and derelicts in the open sea 

 near its coasts. There are many things that can not be allowed to be done on the 

 open sea with impunity, and against which every sea is mare clausum; and the right 

 of self-defense as to person and property prevails there as fully as elsewhere. If the 

 fish upon Canadian coasts could be destroyed by scattering poison in the open sea 

 adjacent with some small profit to those engaged in it, would Canada, upon the just 

 principles of international law, be held defenseless in such a case? Yet that process 

 would be no more destructive, inhuman, and wanton than this. 



"If precedents are wanting for a defense so necessary and so proper, it is because 

 precedents for such acourse of conduct are likewise unknown. The best international 

 law has arisen from precedents that have been established when the just occasion 

 for them arose, undeterred by the discussion of abstract and inadecjuate rules." 



I have the honor to be, sir, with the highest considePiition, your obedient servant, 



James G. Blaine. 



