12 • THE TRUE ISSUES. 



justification of all nations to be declared incompetent to prevent 



seizures. 



wrongs so obvious and so destructive? 



"In the judgment of this Government, the law 

 of the sea is not lawlessness. Nor can the law of the 

 sea, and the liberty which it confers, and which 

 it protects, be perverted to justify acts which are 

 immoral in themselves, which inevitably tend to 

 results against the interests and against the wel- 

 fare of mankind." 1 

 Lord Salisbury These were the questions involved, according 



again introduces t. " o 



ukase - to the view of the Government of the United 



States. But, notwithstanding the clear manner 

 in which they were presented, and the explicit 

 statement of Mr. Blaine that the right of the 

 United States to protect the seal does not depend 

 upon the nature of their sovereignty over the 

 waters of Bering Sea, Lord Salisbury in his note 

 of May 22, 1890, 2 again recurs to that subject by 

 quoting Mr. Adams's protest against the ukase of 

 1821, relying thereon to establish the right of 

 British subjects to fish and hunt throughout Ber- 

 ing Sea outside the three-mile limit, which right, 

 granting it to exist, Mr. Blaine had already stated, 

 would not afford the requisite justification. 3 



1 Appendix to Case of the United States, Vol. I, p. 200. 



* Appendix to Case of the United States, Vol. I, p. 207. 



* Appendix to Case of the United States, Vol. I, p. 202. 



