1122 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



sea with impunity, and against which every sea is mare clausum. 

 And the right of self-defence as to person and property prevails 

 there as fully as elsewhere." 



In the correspondence which preceded the negotiation of the 

 treaty submitting the dispute to arbitration, the claim of the right of 

 the United States to protect the seals, and the principles upon which 

 such a right rested, were discussed at great length by Mr. Elaine, then 

 Secretary of State of the United States, and by Lord Salisbury 

 for Great Britain. 



In a letter dated the 17th December, 1890, to Lord Salisbury, after 

 reviewing the issues to be submitted to arbitration, Mr. Elaine, as ap- 

 pears on p. 286 of Appendix 1 to the Case of the United States in the 

 American reprint of the Fur Seal Proceedings, known as vol. II, 

 stated : 



676 " The repeated assertions that the Government of the United 

 States demands that the Behring Sea be pronounced mare 

 clausum, are without foundation. The Government has never 

 claimed it and never desired it. It expressly disavows it." 



And then Mr. Elaine quoted the language of Mr. Phelps, which I 

 have just read. 



On the 21st February, 1891, Lord Salisbury wrote to Sir Julian 

 Pauncefote, the British Minister in Washington, the following letter, 

 which appears on p. 290 of the same vol. II : 



" The dispatch of Mr. Elaine, under date of the 17th December, 

 has been carefully considered by Her Majesty's Government. The 

 effect of the discussion which has been carried on between the two 

 Governments has been materially to narrow the area of controversy. 

 It is now quite clear that the advisers of the President do not claim 

 Behring's Sea as a mare clausum. and indeed that they repudiate 

 that contention in express terms. Nor do they rely, as a justification 

 for the seizure of British ships in the open sea, upon the contention 

 that the interests of the seal fisheries give to the United States Gov- 

 ernment any right for that purpose which, according to international 

 law, it would not otherwise possess." 



I shall not read from vol. II of the American reprint all the 

 questions which were submitted to the Tribunal, but shall content 

 myself with reading merely the questions with which I am directly 

 concerned, in order to answer the question put to me by you, Mr. 

 President. These questions are found on pp. 3 and 4 of this sarnie 

 volume from which I have read, in that portion of the volume called 

 the Appendix to the Case of the United States. The first question 

 is: 



" 1. What exclusive jurisdiction in the sea now known as the 

 Behring Sea, and what exclusive rights in the seal fisheries therein, 

 did Russia assert and exercise prior and up to the time of the cession 

 of Alaska to the United States? 



