JURTSDrCTIONAL RIGHTS IN BERING SEA. 235 



TJncIer the claiui of Russia that the term of ten years had exph'ed, the 

 tJuited States failed to secure any redress in the Lor lot case. With all 

 due respect to Lord Salisbury's judgment, the case of the Lor lot sustains 

 the entire correctness of the position of the United States in this con- 

 tention. 



- It only remains to say that whatever duty Great Britain owed to 

 Alaska as a Russian province, whatever she agreed to do or to refrain 

 from doing, touching Alaska and the Behring Sea, was not changed by 

 the mere fact of the transfer of sovereignty to the United States. It 

 was explicitly declared, in the sixth article of the treaty by which the 

 territory was ceded by Russia, that " the cession hereby made conveys 

 all the rights, franchises, and privileges now belonging to Russia in the 

 said territory or dominions and appurtenances thereto." Neither by 

 the treaty with Russia of 1825, nor by its rencAval in 1843, nor by its 

 second renewal in 1859, did Great Britain gain any right to take seals 

 in Behring Sea. In fact, those treaties were a prohibition upon her 

 which she steadily respected so long as Alaska was a Russian j)rovince. 

 It is for Great Britain now to show by what law she gained rights in 

 that sea after the transfer of its sovereignty to the United States. 



During all the time elapsing between the treaty of 1825 and the ces- 

 sion of Alaska to the United States in 1867, Great Britain never aflirmed 

 the right of her subjects to capture fur-seal in tbe Behring Sea; and, as 

 a matter of tact, her subjects did not, during that long period, attempt 

 to catch seals in the Behring Sea. Lord Salisbury, in replying to my 

 assertion that these lawless intrusions upon the fur-seal fisheries began 

 in 188C, declares that they had occurred before. He points out one 

 attempt in 1870, in which forty-seven skins w^ere found on board an 

 intruding vessel; in 1872 there was a rumor that expeditions were about 

 to fit out in Australia and Victoria for the purpose of taking seals in 

 the Behring Sea; in 1874 seme reports were heard tbat vessels had 

 entered the sea for that purpose; one case was reported in 1875; two 

 cases in 1884; two also in 1885. 



These cases, I may say without intending disrespect to his lordship, 

 prove the truth of the statement which he endeavors to controvert, 

 because they form just a sufficient number of exceptions to establish the 

 fact that the destructive intrusion began in 1880. But I refer to them 

 now for the.purpose of showing that his lordship does not attempt to 

 cite the intrusion of a single British sealer into the Behring Sea until 

 after Alaska had been transferred to the United States. I am justified, 

 therefore, in repeating the questions which I addressed to Her Majesty's 

 Government on the 22d of last January, and which still remain un- 

 answered, viz : 



Whence did the ships of Canada derive tlie ri.2,'ht to do, in 1886, that which they 

 had refrained from doinjr for nearly ninety years? 



Upon what gi'oiinds did Hi-.r Majesty's Government defend, in the year 1886, a 

 conrse of conduct in the ISehring Sea which had been carefully avoided ever since the 

 discovery of that seaf 



By wliat reasoning did Her Majesty's Government conclude that an act may ho 

 committed with iminiuity against the rights of the United States which had never 

 been attempted against the same rights when held by the Russian Empire? 



I have, etc., 



James G. Blaine. 



