APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 53 
upon the purchase-money of Alaska Territory. One or two American Revenue 
36 cutters are always cruizing in the Behring’s Sea and that portion of the North 
Pacific to the south of the Aleutian Islands, ever on the alert to prevent any 
vessels but those of the Alaska Commercial Company from capturing seals there. 
Meeting with no effectual opposition, and the cost of litigation precluding any 
chances of success for the appellant, the Government has become more and more 
aggressive, until finally, changing from a defensive to an offensive supervision, their 
action has culminated in the deliberate seizure of three British sailing schooners 
upon, whatever a national greed may declare to the contrary, the high and open 
seas, recognized by international law as part of the world’s great highway, free to 
the commerce of all countries, and a natural means of intercourse of all nations. 
It is laid down as one of the first principles of maritime and commercial interna- 
tional law that the open sea or main ocean is, like the atmosphere, free for common 
use to all mankind, and cannot be appropriated by any State to the exclusion of the 
others. Bearing in mind the huge improbability of the act of the Revenue cutter 
not being in consonance with Governmental orders, what do we find? That anation, 
disregarding on one coast the belt of the sea littoral which constitutes the range 
belonging to coast defence, is actually assuming on another coast supreme maritime 
jurisdiction over a waste of waters comprising half the northern part of a vast ocean. 
In the exercise of this self-arrogated authority foreign mercantile vessels are forcibly 
seized and, with their cargoes, are declared confiscated, while with an unaccount- 
able magnanimity the crews, after being landed at an American port many hundred 
miles distant from the scene of their capture, are allowed to go at large. It may be 
advanced that if open to indiscriminate capture the fur-seal would have ere this 
become extinct, or nearly so. But though this has been the case with the seal in the 
southern regions it is a fact, which, deplorable as it may be, would furnish a most 
flimsy excuse to a Government whose regulation of the industry in Alaskan waters 
is prompted not by philanthropy, but by strictly mercenary considerations. So far 
has this latter disposition carried them as to cause them to become responsible for an 
act which, if committed by a vessel privately manned and owned, would bear but 
one interpretation. As it is, the act is one that is rash, aggressive, and, in the face 
of what is known, bitterly unjust, and is already spoken of as an unworthy means 
ef reprisal for the late seizures made by Canada of American fishing-vessels on the 
Atlantic coast. The sealing schooners when seized were over 70 miles from any 
land, and how, with this fact before them, the United States Government can 
attempt, with any show of reason, to justify the conduct of the Commander of the 
“ Corwin,” it is difficult to imagine. With that evidence we have at hand, the seiz- 
ures and detention are manifestly illegal, and representations of the affair through 
the proper official channels have already been forwarded to the Home Government. 
Britain is not belligerent, the strength she possesses—imparted by the commerce she 
conducts in every quarter of the globe—she does not misuse. 
Mr. Munroe to Mv. Spring, August 7, 1886. 
(See Inclosure 4 in No. 7.) 
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, November 15, 1886. 
DEAR Srr: As our sealing schooners will leave Victoria on or about the 10th 
December for the sealing expeditions of 1887, many of them will not return to Vic- 
toria until September, or, in other words, not until the Behring’s Sea trip is-com- 
pleted. We are, accordingly, anxious to know what is being done in the case of our 
seized vessels, and whether or not we may look for protection against what we and 
even the American press is pleased to term piracy. We haveno occasion to interfere 
with the Alaska Commercial Company’s rights on the Priboloff Islands, nor do our 
vessels come anywhere near Jand. The fact is, we take out at sea from 50 to 100 
miles what the Honourable H. Elliot, of the Smithsonian Institute, in his Report of 
1874 on the Seal Islands, calls “ batchelor seals,” or those not required on breeding- 
grounds, to which Report I would be pleased to call your attention. 
The industry is of too much importance to Canada to allow the Alaska Commercial 
Company to dictate who shall and who shall not take seals on the high or Behring’s 
Sea. For the season of 1886 there was brought into Victoria from the Pacific Ocean 
and Behring’s Sea, and shipped therefrom to England and the United States, 50,000 
i Sr valued at about 350,000 dollars. It is evident that the business is worth pro- 
ecting. 
Just here allow me to contradict a statement made by Special Agent Single, of 
the United States Treasury Department, in which he says that three-fourths of the 
seals shot in the water sink and are lost. From the experience of our hunters I main- 
