THE FUR-SEALS AND THE BERING SEA AWARD 51 



be not only useless, but positively harmful, in that they 

 served to protect a nefarious practice. Hence the duty was 

 plain to alter them as soon as possible. England's reply, to 

 the effect that in her estimation the laws were not defective 

 and could well await the proper time for revision, seemed to 

 the American officials an extraordinary conclusion to draw 

 from the facts, a conclusion so little in accord with all rea- 

 sonable deductions that it seemed unaccountable. The ad- 

 ministration was perplexed and annoyed. With some show 

 of feeling, the Secretary of State, Mr. Sherman, wrote to Mr. 

 Hay, the American Ambassador in London (May 10, 1897) : 



... On the other hand, I think I have shown that the British 

 Government has from the beginning and continuously failed to 

 respect the real intent and spirit of the Tribunal or the obliga- 

 tions imposed by it. This is shown by the refusal to extend the 

 regulations to the Asiatic waters ; by the failure to put in opera- 

 tion the recommendation for a suspension of the killing of the 

 seals for three, for two, or even for one year ; by the neglect to 

 put the regulations in force until long after the first sealing season 

 had been entered on; by the almost total evasion of the patrol 

 duty ; by the opposition to suitable measures for the enforcement 

 of the prohibition against firearms ; by the omission to enact legis- 

 lation necessary to secure conviction of the guilty; and by the 

 refusal to allow or provide for an inspection of skins in the inter- 

 est of an honest observance of the regulations. ... A course so 

 persistently followed for the past three years has practically accom- 

 plished the commercial extermination of the fur-seals and brought 

 to naught the patient labors and well-meant conclusions of the 

 Tribunal of Arbitration. . . . 



Congress displayed a similar feeling of resentment by con- 

 sidering a bill providing for the slaughter of the entire 

 American herd on the Pribyloff Islands the following season. 

 This very radical suggestion might be regarded as the flourish 

 of a trump card. It probably was intended to demonstrate 

 in a striking manner the fact that the United States could 

 speedily end the controversy over the heads of all concerned, 

 and it was thereby hoped to arouse the London foreign office 

 from its attitude of indifference toward the question of the 

 seals. The measure seems, nevertheless, to have been seri- 



