292 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



jects for 100 miles' distauce from the coast, wliicli had been put forward 

 ill the ukase of 18-Jl. 



JNIr. Blaine does not deal with these protests, which appear to Her 

 Majesty's Government to be in themselves amply sufficient to decide 

 the question whether Great Britain did or did not acquiesce in the 

 Russian claim put forward by the ukase. Ho contines himself mainly, 

 in the dispatch under consideration, to the consideration of the treaties 

 which Avere subsequently made between Great Britain and Russia and 

 America and Russia in the year 1S25, and especially of that between 

 Russia and Great Britain. This treaty, of Avhich the text is printed 

 at the close of Mr. Blaine's dispatch, does not contain a word to signify 

 the acquiescence of Great Britain in the claim recently put forward by 

 Russia to control the waters of the sea for 100 miles from her coast. 

 There is no stij)ulation upon which this interpretation can be im]>osed 

 by any process of constrnction whatsoever. But there is a pr(>\ision 

 having, in our judgment, a totally opposite tendency, which indeed was 

 intended to negative the extravagant claim that had recently been 

 made on the part of Russia, and it is upon this provision that the main 

 part of Mr. Blaine's argument, as I understand it, is founded. The 

 stipulation to which I refer is contained in the first article and runs as 

 follows : 



Article 1. It is agreed that the respective subjects of the high contracting par- 

 ties shall not bo troubled or molested in any part of the ocean commonly called the 

 Pacific Ocean, either in navigating the same, in fishing therein, or in landiiig at 

 such parts of the coast as shall not have ))een already occupied, in order to trade 

 with the natives, under the restrictions and conditions specified in the folloAving 

 articles. 



I understand Mr. Blaine's argument to be that, if Great Britain had 

 intended to protest against the claim of Russia to exclude ships for 100 

 miles from her coasts in Behring Sea, she would have taken this o[)por- 

 tanity of doing so; but that, in confining herself to stipulations in 

 favor of full liberty of navigation and fishing in any part of the ocean 

 commonly called the Pacific Ocean, she, by implication, renounced any 

 claim that could arise out of the same set of circumstances in regard to 

 any sea that was not part of the Pacific Ocean. And then Mr. Blaine 

 goes on to contend that the phrase "Pacific Ocean" did not and does 

 not include Behring Sea. 



Even if this latter contention were correct, I should earnestly demur 

 to the conclusion that our inherent rights to free ])assage and free fish- 

 ing over a vast extent of ocean could be effectively renounced by mere 

 reticence or omission. The right is one of which we could not be de- 

 prived unless we consented to abandon it, and that consent could not 

 be sufficiently inferred from our negotiators having omitted to men- 

 tion the subject upon one i)articular occasion. 



But I am not prepared to admit the justice of Mr. Blaine's contention- 

 that the words "Pacific Ocean" did not include Behring Sea. I be- 

 lieve that in common parlance, then and now, Behring Sea was and is 

 part of the Pacific Ocean; and that the latter words were used in order 

 to give the fullest ami widest scope possible to the claim which the 

 fJritish negotiators were solemnly recording of a right freely to navigate 

 diid fish in every part of it, and throughout its entire extent. In proof 

 -of the argument tliat the wrtrds "Pacific Ocean" do not include Bering 

 S(^i, IMr. niaine adduces a long list of mai)s in which a designation dis- 

 tinct from that of "Pacific Ocean" is given Behring Sea; either "B«^h- 

 ring Sea," or "Sea of Kamchatka," or the "Sea of Amulir." The 

 argument will hardly have any force unless it is applicable with equal 

 truth to all the other oceans of the world. But no one will dispute 



