APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 631 
The proceedings which took place when the second period of the Russian American 
Company was at an end are thus described in Bancroft’s ‘“ History of Alaska”: 
«oo  . ,) 6 In the variety and extent of its operations,’ declare the members of 
the Imperial Council, ‘no other Company can compare with it. In addition to a 
commercial and industrial monopoly, the Government has invested it with a portion 
of its own powers in governing the vast and distant territory over which it now 
holds control. A change in this system would now be of doubtful benefit. To open 
our ports to all hunters promiscuously would be a death-blow to the fur trade, while the 
Government, having transferred to the Company the control of the Colonies, could 
not now resume it without great expense and trouble, and would have to create new 
financial resources for such a purpose.’ ” 
The Imperial Council, it will be seen, did not hesitate to call the Russian-American 
«Company a monopoly, which it could not have been if Lord Salisbury’s construction 
of the Treaty was correct. Nor did the Council feel any doubt that to open the ports 
of the Behring’s Sea ‘to all hunters promiscuously would be a death-blow to the 
fur trade.” 
Bancroft says further: 
Spree “This opinion of the Imperial Council, together with a Charter defining 
the privileges and duties of the Company, was delivered to the Czar, and received 
his signature on the 11th October, 1844. The new Charter did not differ in its main 
features from that of 1821, though the boundary was, of course, changed in accord- 
ance with the English and American Treaties. None of the Company’s rights were 
curtailed, and the additional privileges were granted of trading with certain ports 
in China and of shipping tea direct trom China to St. Petersburgh.” 
The Russian-American Company was thus chartered for a third period of twenty 
years, and at the end of the time it was found that the gross receipts amounted to 
75,770,000 roubles, a minor part of it from the tea trade. The expenses of adminis- 
tration were very large. The shareholders received dividends to the amount of 
10,210,000 roubles—about 900 per cent. for the whole period, or 45 per cent. per annum 
on the original capital. At the time the third period closed, in 1862, the Russian 
41 Government saw an opportunity to sell Alaska, and refused to continue the 
Charter of the Company. Agents of the United States had initiated negotia- 
tions for the transfer of Alaska as early as 1859. The Company continued, practically, 
however, to exercise its monopoly until 1867, when Alaska was sold by Russia to the 
United States. The enormous profits of the Russian American Company in the fur 
trade of the Behring’s Sea continued under the Russian flag for more than forty years 
after the Treaties of 1824 and 1825 had been concluded. And yet Lord Salisbury con- 
tends that during this long period of exceptional profits from the fur trade Great 
Britain and the United States had as good a right as Russia to take part in these 
highly lucrative ventures. 
American and English ships in goodly numbers during this whole period annually 
visited and traded on the north-west coast on the Pacific Ocean. And yet, of all these 
vessels of the United States and Great Britain, not one ever sought to disturb the 
fur fisheries of the Behring’s Sea or along its coasts, either of the continent or of the 
islands. So far as known, it is believed that neither American nor English ships ever 
attempted to take one fur-seal at the Pribyloff Islands or in the open waters of the 
Behring’s Sea during that period. ‘The 100-mile limit was for the preservation of all 
these fur animals, and this limit was observed for that purpose by all the maritime 
nations that sent vessels to the Behring waters. 
Can any one believe it to be possible that the maritime, adventurous, gain-loving 
people of the United States and of Great Britain could have had such an inviting 
field open to them forty years and yet not one ship of either nation enter the Beh- 
ring’s Sea to compete with the Russian-American Company for the inordinate profits 
which had flowed so steadily and for so long a period into their treasury from the 
furtrade? The fact that the ships of both nations refrained, during that long period, 
from taking a single fur-seal inside the shores of that sea is a presumption of their 
lack of right and their recognized disability so strong that, independently of all 
other arguments, it requires the most authentic and convincing evidence to rebut 
it. That English ships did not enter the Behring’s Sea to take part in the catching 
of seals is not all that can be said. Her acquiescence in Russia’s power over the 
seal fisheries was so complete that during the forty years of Russia’s supremacy in 
the Behring’s Sea (that followed the Treaties of 1824-25) it is not believed that Great 
Britain even made a protest, verbal or written, against what Bancroft describes as 
the ‘‘ Russian monopoly.” 
A certain degree of confusion and disorganization in the form of the government 
that had existed in Alaska was the inevitable accompaniment of the transfer of 
sovereignty to the United States. The American title was not made complete until 
the money, specified as the price of the Treaty, had been appropriated by Congress 
and paid to the Russian Minister by the Executive Department of the Government 
of the United States. This was effected in the latter half of the year 1868. The 
