JURISDICTIONAL RIGHTS IN BERING SEA. 225 



Salisbury's version of what Mr, Adams said, and in juxtaposition i^ro- 

 duce Mr. Adams's full text as he wrote it : 



[Lord Salisbury's quotation from Mr. Adams.] 



The United States can admit no part of these claims; theirright of navigation and 

 fishing is perfect, and has been in constant exercise from the earliest times throughout 

 the whole extent of the Southern Ocean, subject only to the ordinary exceptions and 

 exclusions of the territorial jurisdictions. 



[Full text of Mr. Adams's paragraph.] 



The United States can admit no part of these claims. Their right of navigation and 

 of fishing is perfect, and has been in constant exercise from the earliest times, after 

 the peace of 1783, througliout the whole extent of the Soutliern Ocean, subject only to 

 the ordinary exceptions and exclusions of the territorial jurisdictions, tvhich so far as 

 Hussian rights are concerned, are confined to certain islands north of the fifty-fifth degree 

 of latitude, and have no existence on the continent of America. 



The words in italics are those which are left out of Mr. Adams's para- 

 graph in the dispatch of Lord Salisbury. They are precisely the words 

 upon which the Government of the United States founds its argument 

 in this case. Conclusions or inferences resting upon the paragraph, 

 with the material parts of Mr. Adams's text omitted, are of course value- 

 less. 



The first object is to ascertain the true meaning of Mr. Adams's 

 words which were omitted by Lord Salisbury. " Russian rights," said 

 Mr. Adams, " are confined to certain islands north of the fifty-fifth de- 

 gree of latitude." The islands referred to are as easily recognized to- 

 day as when Mr. Adams described their situation sixty-seven years 

 ago. The best known among them, both under Eussian and American 

 jurisdiction, are Sitka and Kadiak; but their whole number is great. 

 If Mr. Adams literally intended to confine Russian rights to those 

 islands, all the discoveries of Vitus Behriug and other great navigators 

 are brushed away by one sweep of his pen, and a large chapter of 

 history is but a fable. 



But Mr. Adams goes still farther. He declares that " Russian rights 

 have no existence on the continent of America." If we take the words 

 of Mr. Adams with their literal meaning, there was no such thing as 

 " Russian Possessions in America," although forty-four years after Mr. 

 Adams wrote these words the United States paid Russia 17,200,000 

 for these "possessions" and all the rights of land and sea connected 

 therewith. 



This construction of Mr. Adams's language can not be the true one. 

 It would be absurd on its face. The title to that far northern territory 

 was secure to Russia as early as 1741; secure to her against the claims 

 of all other nations ; secure to her thirty-seven years before Captain 

 Cook had sailed into the North Pacific ; secure to her more than half a 

 century before the United States had made good her titlp to Oregon. 

 Russia was in point of time the first power in this region by right of 

 discovery. Without immoderate presumjition she might have chal- 

 lenged the rights of others to assumed territorial possessions; but no 

 nation had shadow of cause or right to challenge her title to the vast 

 region of land and water which, before Mr. Adams was Secretary of 

 State, had become known as the " Russian Possessions." 



Mr. Adams's meaning was not, therefore, and indeed could not be, 



what Lord Salisbury assumed. As against such interpretatian I shall 



endeavor to call his lordship's attention to what this Government 



holds to be the indisputable meaning of Mr. Adams's entire iDaragraph. 



29 



