594 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
statements made to this Government at different stages of the seal fisheries nego- 
tiation. 
On the 25th February, 1888, as already stated in my note of the 29th May, Mr. 
Phelps sent the following intelligence to Secretary Bayard, viz.: “Lord Salisbury 
assents to your proposition to establish, by mutual arrangement between the Goy- 
ernments interested, a close time for fur-seals, between the 15th April and the Ist 
November in each year,.and between 160° of west longitude, and 170° of east longi- 
tude in the Behring’s Sea. And he will cause an Act to be introduced in Parliament 
to give effect to this arrangement so soon as it can be prepared. In his opinion there 
is no doubt that the Act will be passed. He will also join the United States Gov- 
ernment in any preventive measures it may be thought best to adopt by orders issued 
to the naval vessels of the respective Governments in that region.” 
Mr. Phelps has long been known in this country as an able lawyer, accurate in the 
use of words, and discriminating in the statement of facts. The Government of the 
United States necessarily reposes implicit confidence in the literal correctness of the 
despatch above quoted. 
4 Some time after the foregoing conference between Lord Salisbury and Mr. 
Phelps had taken place, his Lordship invited the Russian Ambassador, M. de 
Staal, and the American Chargé, Mr. White (Mr. Phelps being absent from London), 
to a conference held at the Foreign Office on the 16th April, touching the Behring’s 
Sea controversy. This conference was really called at the request of the Russian 
Ambassador, who desired that Russian rights in the Behring’s Sea should be as fully 
recognized by England as American rights had been recognized in the verbal Agree- 
ment of the 25th February between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Phelps. 
The Russian Ambassador received from Lord Salisbury the assurance (valuable 
also to the United States) that the protected area for seal life should be extended 
southward to the 47th degree of north latitude, and also the promise that he would 
have a draught [sic] Convention prepared for submission to the Russian Ambassador 
and the American Chargé.” 
Lord Salisbury now contends that all the proceedings at the Conference of the 
16th April are to be regarded as only ‘‘ provisional, in order to furnish a basis for 
negotiation, and without definitely pledging our Government.” While the under- 
standing of this Government differs from that maintained by Lord Salisbury, I am 
instructed by the President to say that the United States is willing to consider all 
the proceedings of the 16th April, 1888, as cancelled, so far as American rights may 
be concerned. This Government will ask Great Britain to adhere only to the Agree- 
ment made between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Phelps on the 25th February, 1888. 
That was an Agreement made directly between the two Governments, and did not 
include the rights of Russia. Asking Lord Salisbury to adhere to the Agreement 
of the 25th February, we leave the Agreement of the 16th April to be maintained, 
if maintained at all, by Russia, for whose cause and for whose advantage it was 
particularly designed. 
While Lord Salisbury makes a general denial of having given ‘‘ verbal assur- 
ances,” he has not made a special denial touching the Agreement between himself 
and Mr. Phelps, which Mr. Phelps has reported in special detail, and the correctness 
of which he has since specially affirmed on more than one occasion. 
In your second note of the 30th June, received in the afternoon of the Ist July, 
you call my attention (at Lord Salisbury’s request) to a statement which I made in 
my note of the 4th June, to this effect: 
“Tt is evident, therefore, that in 1888 Lord Salisbury abruptly closed the negotia- 
tion because, in his own phrase, ‘the Canadian Government objected.’ ” 
To show that there were other causes for closing the negotiation, Lord Salisbury 
desires that attention be called to a remark made to him by Mr. Phelps on the 3rd 
April, 1888, as follows: ‘‘Under the peculiar circumstances of America at this 
moment, with a general election impending, it would be of little use, and’ indeed 
hardly practicable, to conduct any negotiation to its issue before the general election 
has taken place.” 
I am quite ready to admit that such a statement made by Mr. Phelps might now be 
adduced as one of the reasons for breaking off the negotiation, if, in fact, the nego- 
tiation had been then broken off. But Lord Salisbury immediately proceeded with 
the negotiation. ‘The remark ascribed to Mr. Phelps was made, as Lord Salisbury 
states, on the 3rd April, 1888. On the 5th April Mr. Phelps left London on a visit to 
the United States. On the 6th April Lord Salisbury addressed a private note to 
Mr. White to meet the Russian Ambassador at the Foreign Office, as he had appointed 
a meeting for the 16th April to discuss the questions at issue concerning the seal 
fisheries in Behring’s Sea. 
On the 23rd April there was some correspondence in regard to an Order in Council 
and an Act of Parliament. 
On the 27th April Under-Secretary Barrington of the Foreign Office, in an official 
note, informed Mr, White that “the next step was to bring in an Act of Parliament,” 
