26 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



has been agreed by international arrangement to forbid it. 

 Fur-seals are indisputably animals ferce naturce, and these 

 have universally been regarded by jurists as res nullius until 

 they are caught ; no person, therefore, can have property in 

 them until he has actually reduced them into possession by 

 capture. It requires something more than a mere declara- 

 tion that the government or citizens of the United States, or 

 even other countries interested in the seal trade, are losers 

 by a certain course of proceeding, to render that course an 

 immoral one. Her Majesty's Government would deeply re- 

 gret that the pursuit of fur-seals on the high seas by British 

 vessels should involve even the slightest injury to the people 

 of the United States. If the case be proved, they will be 

 ready to consider what measures can be properly taken for 

 the remedy of such injury, but they would be unable on that 

 ground to depart from a principle on which free commerce 

 on the high seas depends." 



In answer to Mr. Elaine's contention that Russia had 

 gained a prescriptive right, through her exclusive control of 

 the Bering Sea fisheries, from the discovery of Alaska until 

 1867, and that the United States had since that date come 

 into possession of, and had continued to enjoy, these same ex- 

 clusive rights (thereby establishing more firmly her own pre- 

 scriptive title), Lord Salisbury referred to the numerous 

 American and English official protests (already mentioned 

 supra), against the early Russian assumptions in Bering Sea. 

 He quoted as well the words of many prominent Ameri- 

 can statesmen, that had been uttered in condemnation of 

 Russia's illegal claims over the high seas in excess of the 

 ordinary three-mile limit of marine jurisdiction. In further 

 refutation of Mr. Blaine's argument, he furnished a long 

 list of British vessels that had been engaged in the pursuit 

 of sealing in Bering Sea since the acquisition of Alaska by 

 the United States. To Mr. Blaine's assertion that "The 

 President is persuaded that all friendly nations will concede 

 to the United States the same rights and privileges on the 

 lands arid in the waters of Alaska which the same friendly na- 

 tions always conceded to the Empire of Russia" he frankly 



