34 PROTECTION AND PROPERTY RIGHTS. 



jurisdictional which he had defended his position based upon 



questions not the 



true issue. those documents, he insisted at the close of his 



note that he had not been dealing with the true 

 issues in the case ; and he forthwith proceeded to 

 state those issues by quoting the following from 

 a dispatch written by Mr. Phelps when United 

 States Minister at London to Mr. Bayard, Secre- 

 taiy of State, on the 28th of September, 1888 1 1 

 Mare dan sum " Much learning has been expended upon the dis- 



doctrme inappli- ° *- L 



cable - cussion of the abstract question of the right of 



mare clausum. I do not conceive it to be appli- 

 cable to the present case. 

 Mr. Phelps as- "Here is a valuable fishery, and a large and, if 



serts ownership in 



sealeries. properly managed, permanent industry, the prop- 



erty of the nation on whose shores it is carried 

 on. It is proposed by the colony of a foreign 

 nation, in defiance of the joint remonstrance of 

 all the countries interested, to destroy this busi- 

 ness by the indiscriminate slaughter and exter- 

 mination of the animals in question in the open 

 neighboring sea, during the period of gestation, 

 when the common dictates of humanity ought 

 to protect them, were there no interests at all 

 involved. And it is suggested that we are pre- 

 vented from protecting ourselves against such 

 depredations because the sea, at a certain dis- 

 tance from the coast, is free. 



Appendix to Case of United States, Vol. I, p. 287. 



