92 ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 



ognized in that ai^e, tliat lier exclusive title to all, or nearly all, of this 

 rejiiou is very fully made out. And, in the tirst place, let me again 

 bring to your attention here that the sole product of this region was 

 substantially fur-bearing animals and other animals useful for their 

 skins, and that the gathering of that product was the sole benefit that 

 mankind could derive from that portion of the globe at the time. And, 

 next, there was only enough for one power, and that one power was 

 abundantly competent to reap the entire harvest. There was not 

 enougli for two. Several nations might, indeed, contend for the bene- 

 fits of this trade in fur-bearing animals, but if they did, there would 

 not be enough for all of them, whilst the llussian trade would be 

 impoverished; and that would be of no advantage to the other nations 

 of the earth: they would make investments in it wldch would not be 

 remunerated. It would be best, therefore, for the conntries immedi- 

 ately concerned that the reaping of the entire harvest should be left to 

 one. But, in the next place, it would be better for the interests of 

 mankind; and that is the important consideration here. By leaving 

 the monopoly of the fur trade and of the otlier animals to Russia alone 

 the trade would be regular; the world would be regularly furnished by 

 the pro<luct of this region; it would be furnished at the smallest 

 expenditure in money and labor, and it would be furnished, therefore, 

 at the lowest price. And, consequently, all interests — those of rival 

 nations and of the whole world itself — would be best served by confin- 

 ing tlie trade to the one Power. The bounty was easily exhaustible, 

 and wherever a jjroduct of Nature is exhaustible, it is better to leave 

 the whole to be exploited by the few, or the one, who can successfully 

 do it. Now, acting upon these views, Russia made a perfectly good 

 title according to the ideas of that age and according to a principle 

 entirely defensible: she established trading stations on the coast of 

 Siberia, on the coast of Alaska and on Bering Sea, and still others 

 along this north-west coast. It is true that along the north-west coast 

 she met with the rivalry of other nations, and they made similar estab- 

 lishments along that coast, although not to such an extent as Russia 

 did. But all north of the GOth degree of latitude was left exclusively 

 to her. 



The President. Did you say 60th or 62nd ? 



Mr. Carter. I say the 60th. It is sometimes called the 61st. The 

 line which separated the unquestioned part of Russian possessions 

 from those which were questioned was sometimes styled the 60th, and 

 sometimes 61st degree of north latitude, tlie line being somewhat 

 indefinite. Now that was a title which Russia had asserted upon the 

 ground of prior discovery, earlier than the year 1800; that occupation 

 she had made earlier than 1800. She had, in her own view — and I think 

 justly — done every act necessary to secure to her a complete and exclu- 

 sive title ui^on all the shores and all the islands of that sea, and to the 

 Aleutian Islands, which bounded it on the southern side. In 1799, 

 acting upon the assumption that she had thus acquired an exclusive 

 title, she made a grant of the exclusive privilege of that trade to a cor- 

 poration existing under her laws, and that was by what is called the 

 Ukase of 1799, or, jierhaps more correctly, the charter of the Araericau 

 Oomijany. It is found on page 14 of the first volume of the Appendix 

 to the American Case. 



[Mr. Carter here read the first four sections of the Ukase. ] 



Tiiese extracts from that Ukase will be sufficient to convey an idea 

 of the nature and extent of this grant by the Russian Government. 

 It was not a x)ublic fact notified to all the other nations of the worldj 



