592 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
answer comes so late that it would be impossible now to proceed this season with the 
negotiation the President had desired. 
An agreement to arbitrate requires careful consideration. The United States is 
perhaps more fully committed to that form of international adjustment than any 
other Power, but it cannot consent that the form in which arbitration shall be under- 
taken shall be decided without full consultation and conference between the two 
Governments. 
I beg further to say that you must have misapprehended what I said touching 
British claims for injuries and losses alleged to have been inflicted upon British ves- 
sels in the Behring’s Sea by agents ‘of the United States. My declaration was 
2 that arbitration would logically and necessarily include that point. It is not 
to be conceded, but decided with other issues of far greater weight. 
I have, &c. 
(Signed) JAMES G. BLAINE. 
No. 2. 
Sir J. Pauncefote to the Marquis of Salisbury.—(Received August 7.) 
MAGNOLIA, MASSACHUSETTS, July 28, 1890. 
My Lorp: I have the honour to inclose copies of two notes which 
I addressed to the Secretary of State on receipt of your Lordship’s 
despatches of the 20th June* and of the 21st June last,t and of the 
reply thereto which I have received from Mr. Blaine. 
The reply appears as the last paper in the correspondence relating to 
the Behring’s Sea fisheries which has just been sent to the House of 
Representatives. 
Mr. Blaine contends that a Convention was actually agreed on 
between your Lordship and Mr. Phelps on the 25th February, 1888, 
except as to details, and he asks Great Britain to adhere to that Agree. 
ment. He states that the interposition of Canada, to which he attributes 
its abandonment by Her Majesty’s Government, was, in the President’s 
belief, ‘‘a grave injustice to the Government of the United States.” 
It would seem, however, that Mr. Phelps did not consider that any 
Agreement had resulted from the communications which passed between 
him and your Lordship on the 25th February, for on the 28th July, 
according to Mr. Blaine, he telegraphed to his Government expressing 
the“ fear that owing to Canadian opposition we shall get no Convention.” 
It was never suggested at that period, or at any period between the 
close of the London negotiations of 1888 and the renewal of the nego- 
tiations in Washington, that any Agreement existed between the two 
Governments in relation to the fur-seal fisheries beyoud a common desire 
to adopt all measures shown to be necessary for the preservation of the 
fur-seal species, which was said to be in danger of extinetion. 
If any such Agreement as is appealed to by Mr. Blaine did exist it is 
difficult to understand why the negotiation was renewed in Washing- 
ton with the object of inquiring into the evidence and of endeavouring 
to arrive at a conclusion as to the extent of the alleged evils of pelagic 
sealing and the measures to be adopted for the preser vation of the fur- 
seal species. On this point I would refer to Mr. Blaine’s note to me of 
the 1st March, 1890, transmitting the evidence relied on i his Govern- 
ment in support of their contention, and of which a printed copy was 
inclosed in my despatch to your Lordship of the 15th April last.t 
I have, &c. 
(Signed) JULIAN PAUNCEFOTE. 
* See “United States No. 2 (1890),” p. 491. + Ibid.,p.493. — ¢ Ibid., p. 423. 
Pp ’ 
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