46 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
the United States of the same yeat were preceded—negotiations which, as pointed 
out in the Report, arose out of conflicting claims to these very waters—points to the 
contrary conclusion. It would, indeed, be difficult to condemn the present pre- 
29 tensions of the United States authorities in language more convincing or 
emphatic than that which, while those negotiations were in progress, was used 
by Mr. Middleton, then Russian Minister at St. Petersburgh, in his Memorandum 
dated the 13th December, 1823. (Vide American State Papers, Foreign Relations, 
vol. v, No. 384.) 
It is laid downin that Memorandum that ‘‘the existence of territorial rights to the 
distance of 100 miles from the coasts upon two opposite continents, and the prohibi- 
tion of approaching to the same distance from these coasts or from those of all the 
intervening islands, are innovations in the law of nations and measures unexampled. 
It must thus be imagined that this prohibition, bearing the pains of ‘confiscation, 
applies to a long line of coasts with the intermediate islands, situate in vast seas 
where the navigation is subject to innumerable and unknown difficulties, and where 
the chief employment, which is the whale fishery, cannot be compatible with a regu- 
lated and well-determined course.” 
Mr. Middleton added that: ‘‘Universal usage, which has obtained the force of law, 
has established for all the coasts an accessory limit of a moderate distance, which is 
sufficient for the security of the country and for the commerce of its inhabitants, 
but which lays no restraint upon the universal rights of nations, nor upon the free- 
dom of commerce and navigation.” 
Under the Treaty of 1867 Russia ceded to the United States ‘all the rights, fran- 
chises, and privileges” then belonging to her in the territory or dominion included 
within the limits described (vide Article VI), but could not cede a right which, in 
the express terms of the Treaty of 1825, was recognized as belonging to the subjects 
of the British Crown as well as to those of Russia. 
This is, as far as I have been able to ascertain, the first occasion upon which claims 
of the kind now advanced have been enforced. Sealing-vessels from British Colum- 
bia have for some years past frequented the waters of Behring’s Sea without moles- 
tation, and a letter, of which I inclose a copy, addressed by Mr. William Munsie, of 
Victoria, British Columbia, to my Minister of Marine and Fisheries, shows how 
serious will be the effect of this interference upon a well-established and important 
industry in which many British subjects have a substantial interest. 
It is, I think, worth while to contrast the claims now urged by the Government of 
the United States to exclusive control over a part of the Pacific Ocean, the distance 
between the shores of which is, as was pointed out by Mr. Adams in 1822, not less 
than 4,000 miles, with the indignant remonstrances recently made by Mr. Bayard 
against the action of the Canadian authorities in warning United States fishing- 
vessels from entering the territorial waters of the Dominion at points where those 
waters were only a few miles in width and throughout their whole extent in close 
proximity to Canadian territory. A warning of this kind, when given in respect of 
the Bay des Chaleurs, which measures about 18 miles at its mouth, was stigmatized 
by Mr. Bayard in his despatch of the 14th June, 1886, as a ‘‘ wholly unwarranted 
pretension of extra-territorial authority,” and as an ‘‘interference with the unques- 
tionable rights of the American fishermen to pursue their business without molesta- 
tion at any point not within 3 marine miles of the shore.” 
I would also draw your attention specially to the great hardship occasioned to the 
owners and crews of the seized vessels by the confiscation of their catch and by the 
imprisonment of some of the persons on board of them. 
I understand that, owing to the amount of the fines imposed, which were so heavy 
that the owners have declined to pay them, the captains and mates of the seized 
vessels, though originally sentenced to thirty days’ imprisonment, a term which has 
long since expired, are still detained. I may add, in explanation of the concluding 
passage in Mr. Munsie’s letter, that Mr. Ogilvie, the captain of the ‘Caroline, ” 
while waiting at Ounalaska for the trial of his vessel, wandered off into the woods, 
in which it appears, from Mr. Munsie’s statement, that he must have perished. 
Ihave, &e. 
(Signed) LANSDOWNE. 
[Inclosure 2 in No. 22.] 
Report of a Committee of the Honourable the Privy Council for Canada, approved by his 
Excellency the Governor-General in Council on November 27, 1886. 
The Committee of the Privy Council have had under consideration a communica- 
tion from Mr. E. C. Baker, M. P., Vice-President of the British Columbia Board of 
Trade, transmitting a letter from Mr. Theodore Lubbe, the managing owner 
30 of the British Columbia sealing fleet, asking information as to the United 
States claim to the easterly half of Behring’s Sea, as American waters, and 
also a despatch, dated the 26th August last, from the Lieutenant-Governor of British 
