512 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
mores—a pursuit which of necessity involves a serious and permanent 
injury to the rights of the Government and people of the United States,” 
it is obvious that two questions are involved: first, whether the pursuit 
and killing of fur-seals in certain parts of the open sea is, from the point 
of view of international morality, an offence contra bonos mores; and 
secondly, whether, if such be the case, this fact justities the seizure on 
the high seas and subsequent confiscation in time of peace of the private 
vessels of a friendly nation. 
It is an axiom of international maritime law that such action is only 
admissible in the case of piracy or in pursuance of special international 
agreement. This principle has been universally admitted by jurists, 
and was very distinetly laid down by President Ty’er in his Special 
Message to Congress, dated the 27th February, 1843, when, after 
acknowledging the right to detain and search a vessel on suspicion of 
piracy, he goes on to say: ‘‘ With this single exception, no nation has, 
in time of peace, any authority to detain the ships of another upon the 
high seas, on any pretext whatever, outside the territorial jurisdiction.” 
Now, the pursuit of seals in the open sea, under whatever circum- 
stances, has never hitherto been considered as piracy by any civilized 
State. Nor, even if the United States had gone so far as to ake 
463 the killing of fur-seals piracy by their Municipal Law, would this 
have justified them in punishing offences against such Law com- 
mitted by any persons other than their own citizens outside the terri- 
torial jurisdiction of the United States. 
In the case of the Slave Trade, a practice which the civilized world 
has agreed to look upon with abhorrence, the right of arresting the 
vessels of another country is exercised only by special international 
agreement, and no one Government has been allowed that general con- 
trol of morals in this respect which Mr. Blaine claims on behalf of the 
United States in regard of seal-hunting. 
But Her Majesty’s Government must question whether this pursuit 
can of itself be regarded as contra bonos mores, unless and until, for 
special reasons, it has been agreed by international arrangement to for- 
bid it. Fur-seals are indisputably animals fere nature, and these have 
universally been regarded by jurists as res nullius until they are caught; 
no person, therefore, can have property in them until he has actually 
reduced them into possession by capture. 
It requires something more than a mere declaration that the Govern- 
ment or citizens of the United States, or even other countries interested 
in the seal trade, are losers by a certain course of proceeding, to ren- 
der that course an immoral one. 
Her Majesty’s Government would deeply regret that the pursuit of 
fur-seals on the high seas by British vessels should involve even the 
slightest injury to the people of the United States. If the case be 
proved, they will be ready to consider what measures can be properly 
taken for the remedy of such injury, but they would be unable on that 
ground to depart from a principle on which free commerce on the high 
seas depends. 
The second argument advanced by Mr. Blaine is that the ‘“fur-seal 
fisheries of Behring’s Sea had been exclusively controlled by the Gov- 
ernment of Russia, without interference and without question, from 
their original discovery until the cession of Alaska to the United States 
in 1867,” and that “from 1867 to 1886 the possession, in which Russia 
had been undisturbed, was enjoyed by the United States Government 
also without interruption or intrusion from any source.” 
I will deal with these two periods separately. 
