240 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



Mr. Blaine to Sir Julian Pauncefote. 



Bar Harbor, Maine, July 10, 1890. 



Sir: I regret that circumstances beyond ray control have postponed 

 my reply to your two notes of June 30, wliicli were received on the 1st 

 instant, on the eve of my leaving Washington for this place. The note 

 which came to hand on the forenoon of that day inclosed a dispatch 

 from Lord Salisbury, in which his lordship, referring to my note of May 

 29, expresses "a wish to i)oint out some errors" which bethinks I "had 

 gathered from the records in my office." 



The purpose of Lord Salisbury is to show that T misapprehended the 

 facts of the case when I represented him, in my note of May 29, as hav- 

 ing given such "verbal assurances" to Mr. Phelps as warranted the 

 latter in expecting a convention to be concluded between the two Gov- 

 ernments for the protection of the seal fisheries in Behring Sea. 



Si)eaking directly to this point his lordship says : 



Mr. Blaine is under a misconception in imagining that I ever gave any verbal as- 

 surance or any promise of any kind with respect to tlie terms of the proposed con- 

 vention. 



In answer to this statement I beg you will say to Lord Salisbury that 

 I simply quoted, in my note of May 29, the facts communicated by our 

 Minister, Mr. Phelps, and our charge d'affaires, Mr. White, who are re- 

 sponsible for the official statements made to this Government at differ- 

 ent stages of the seal fisheries negotiation. 



On the 25th day of February, 1888, as already stated in my note of 

 May 29, Mr. Phelps sent the following intelligence to Secretary Bayard, 

 viz: 



Lord Salisbury assents to your proposition to establish by mutual arrangement 

 between the Governments interested a close time for fur-seals between April 15 

 and November 1, in each year, and between oue hundred and sixty Oiegrees of longi- 

 tude west, and one hundred and seventy degrees of lougitudo east in the Bering 

 Sea. And he will cause an act to be introduced in Parliament to give effect to this 

 arrangement, so soon as it can be prepared. In his opinion there is no doubt that 

 the act will be passed. Ho will also join the United States Government in any pre- 

 ventive measures it may be thought best to adopt by orders issued to the naval ves- 

 sels of the respective Governments in that region. 



Mr. Phelps has long been known in this country as an able lawyer, 

 accurate in the use of words, and discriminating in the statement of 

 facts. The Government of the United States necessarily rej^oses 

 implicit confidence in the literal correctness of the dispatch above 

 quoted. 



Sometime after the foregoing conference between Lord Salisbury and 

 Mr. Phelps had taken place, his lordship invited the Russian Embas- 

 sador, M. de Staal, and the American charge, Mr. White (Mr. Phelps 

 being absent from London), to a conference held at the Foreign Office 

 on the 16th of April, touchiiigthe Behiing Sea controversy. Thiscon- 

 feren(;e was really called at the request of the Russian Embassador, 

 who desired that Russian rights in the Bering Sea should be as fully 

 recognized by England as American rights had been recognized in the 

 verbal agreement of February 25 between Lord Salisbury and Mr. 

 Phelps. The Russian Embassador reocived from Lord Salisbury the 

 assurance (valuable also to the United States) that the protected area 

 for seal life should be extended southward to the forty-seventh degree 

 of north latitude, and also the promise that he would have " a draft 

 convention prepared for submission to the Russian Embassador and the 

 American charge." 



