34 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



falling off in seal life, for which circumstance they insisted 

 that the killing on the islands by the American company was 

 the main cause, and they also discovered that pelagic sealing 

 in itself was not necessarily destructive to the herd. As a 

 remedy, if indeed a remedy were called for by existing condi- 

 tions, they proposed severe restrictions in relation to the num- 

 ber of seals annually taken upon the islands, and as an area of 

 protection to the seals, recommended a marine belt of ten 

 miles about the Pribyloff Islands, within which no pelagic 

 sealing should be permitted. 



These two very contradictory reports necessarily formed 

 the basis for the consideration of the Paris tribunal, whose 

 office it was to determine a future course of action looking to 

 the preservation of seals in Bering Sea. 



The tribunal met in Paris in the spring of 1893, and con- 

 tinued its sessions well into the summer. The arbitrators 

 chosen were Baron de Courcel (France), Marquis Emilio 

 Visconti-Venosti (Italy), M. Gregario W. W. Gram (Sweden 

 and Norway), Lord Hannan and Sir John S. D. Thomp- 

 son (England), and Justice John M. Harlan and Senator 

 John T. Morgan (United States). The American case was 

 conducted through the agency of the Hon. John W. Foster 

 (who had succeeded Mr. Blaine as Secretary of State), to- 

 gether with Editawl-JL-Ehelps, James C. Carter, Frederick 

 R. Coudert, and Henry Blodget as counsel. 



Although it had been expressly disavowed by Mr. Blaine 

 that the United States put forth any claim to mare clausum 

 over the Bering Sea, it is nevertheless impossible to consider 

 the American position before the tribunal in Paris as other- 

 wise than an attempt to justify such a contention. While no 

 direct and formal allegation of the applicability of the prin- 

 ciples of mare clausum appear in the proceedings, the United 

 States nevertheless sought to make good its position in Bering 

 Sea by maintaining the propriety of early Russian assertions 

 of dominion over those waters, or over at least a hundred- 

 mile belt about their shores. These Russian claims in Bering 



