8 COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Government liave pleasure in acknowledging that these 

 revised translations, with the exception of one or two 

 small errors of no moment, are perfectly accurate. But 

 there are statements and arguments in the Case founded 

 on the original translations, or depending mainly on them 

 for support, which still remain to be answered, and it will 

 therefore be necessary in the proper place to draw atten- 

 tion to the translations and original documents. 



It is not possible, by a mere comparison of the correct 

 and the erroneous translations, to form an accurate oj)inion 

 of the effect of the insertion of the fictitious and inter- 

 i:)olated passages upon the argument contained in the Case 

 for the United States.* Attention will therefore be called, 

 in connection with each branch of the subject, to the man- 

 ner in which it depends uijon such interpolations and 

 errors. When the spurious passages are expunged, and 

 the erroneous translations corrected, it will be found that 

 no evidence remains to support the contentions of the 

 United States {a) that the Kussian Government and the 

 Eussian- American Company claimed and exercised exclu- 

 sive jurisdiction as to trading and hunting in the Behring 

 Sea, and (b) that the Ukase of 1821 was merely declaratory 

 of pre-existing claims which had been enforced therein for 

 many years. The alleged pre-existing claims and their 

 enforcement for many years, so far as they implied any 

 extraordinary maritime jurisdiction, are merely the cre- 

 ations of the translator. 



* For convenience of reference, the original translations furnished 

 by the United States have been printed in parallel columns with the 

 revised translations, and are given in the Appendix to this Counter- 

 Case. (Appendix^ vol. i, pp. 11-55.) 



