384 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
public will not accept this testimony as proving ‘“ confidence” on the part of Con- 
gress. Considering that the House had actually to rescind its action, to abandon the 
position to which it had committed itself, the whole looked decidedly like a con- 
fession that the House felt ‘‘ very shaky” indeed on the validity of the alleged title. 
It recalls the story of the King who quarrelled over some point in a game of chess 
which he had the condescension to play with a subject of his, while a crowd of 
courtiers preserved a dead silence. When the contention was at its height, an officer 
of known skill at the game entered, to whom the King appealed for a decision, and 
who replied instanter: ‘‘Your Majesty is wrong!” ‘How can you tell when you 
have not even glanced at the board?” ‘Quite unnecessary! Would these gentle- 
men,” pointing to the courtiers, ‘remain silent if there was a ghost of a chance to 
say anything in favour of your Majesty?” A claim in our favour and against Lng- 
land, which such ever-ready champions of everything anti-English as Messrs. 
Edmunds, Hoar, Frye, &c., refuse to support, must be indeed hopelessly weak. 
However much one may find fault with what Mr. Felton does say in his article, it 
is, nevertheless, impossible not to regret that he left some things unsaid, that he 
found it impossible “ to continue the history of the legislation of Congress on this 
subject, and ascertain upon what facts it based its late action, the necessity for such 
action, and to speculate upon its probable results. . . .” Light on all these 
peints is certainly very much needed, and it is very much to be hoped that some 
Congressional Pheebus Apollo will furnish it to the public. It is indeed difficult to 
find or imagine any good reason for the new Act of the 2nd March last. It is super- 
fluous, and even absurd, to make a statutory declaration that a law already enacted 
for a certain locality shallapply toit. The measures for its enforcement now ordered 
may be wise, but if they were to be confined to their legitimate sphere, they 
350 were quite within the President’s authority before said Act. They had, in 
fact, been already taken by Mr. Cleveland’s Administration, had then been 
carried out in regions beyond that sphere for two seasons, after which better coun- 
sel prevailed, and they were limited to our acknowledged jurisdiction. The new 
law contains nothing new as to the sphere in which the old law is to be enforced ; 
on the contrary, the attempted extension of this region was distinctly abandoned. 
Congress in this case, as often before, shirked the responsibility, and confined itself 
to ‘‘egging on.” Secretary Blaine’s assertion, that he is merely enforcing an Act of 
Congress when he allows the capture of foreign sealers outside of the 3-mile shore 
limit, is not borne out by the provisions of the Act. 
Apparently, Mr. Felton and his partizans are entirely unconscious of the fact that 
their hypothesis fairly bristles with absurdities. It presupposes that, in the settle- 
ment of a controversy seriously affecting established principles of international 
law, civilized Governments would deliberately stultify themselves to the extent of 
insisting upon these principles being strictly carried out in one part of the ocean, 
and of utterly ignoring them, at the same time, in the part immediately adjoining; 
of discriminating between seas that have not those geographical differences which 
international law makes the very conditio sine qué non of discrimination, and of doing 
all this without any documentary record of their action, and without a word of 
explanation as to the reason forsuch an unprecedented performance. It presupposes 
that the two maritime nations par excellence, Great Britain and the United States. 
each more powerful on the ocean than Russia, would have surrendered to her their 
natural right to the free use of an open sea (expressly declared by Mr. Felton to have 
been known at the time as valuable), without struggle or remonstrance, without 
equivalent or cause! And all this idiotic travesty of patriotism, statesmanship, and 
diplomacy, is imputed to men of the calibre of John Quincy Adams, George Canning, 
and Count Nesselrode. This sorry figment of crazy suppositions is palmed off for 
truth, in the face of documentary proof of a natural, a reasonable, and a consistent 
argument to the contrary. 
We are urged to persist in an indefensible and dishonourable policy when there is 
every evidence that a legitimate and honourable course—that of international con- 
ference and agreement—would bring about every result we profess to be aiming at, 
and bring it about more quickly and more thoroughly than could be hoped for by 
any other means. 
The ultimate outcome of such persistence is plain; it may be delayed, but it can- 
not be escaped from eventually. And finally it must not be overlooked that, at the 
best, even a triumphant maintenance against Great Britain of Mr. Felton’s hypothesis 
would not settle the question in our favour as against the rest of the world. Acqui- 
escence being the basis of that hypothesis, it would be binding only upon those 
nations that had acquiesced. The others remain free to exercise their natural rights 
in Behring’s Sea, and would in time undoubtedly insist upon doing so, without our 
having a chance of preventing them under international law. 
(Signed) ROBERT RAYNER. 
