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APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 645 
2. How far were these claims of jurisdiction as to the seal fisheries recognized and 
conceded by Great Britain? ; 
3. Was the body of water now known as the Behring’s Sea included in the phrase 
“Pacific Ocean,” as used in the Treaty of 1825 between Great Britain and Russia; 
and what rights (if any) in the Behring’s Sea were given or conceded to Great Brit- 
ain by the said Treaty? 
4. Did not all the rights of Russia as to jurisdiction, and as to the seal fisheries in 
Behring’s Sea east of the water boundary, in the Treaty between the United States 
and Russia of the 30th March, 1867, pass unimpaired to the United States under that 
Treaty? 
5. What are now the rights of the United States as to the fur-seal fisheries in the 
waters of the Behring’s Sea outside of the ordinary territorial limits, whether such 
rights grow out of the cession by Russia of any special rights or jurisdiction held by 
her in such fisheries or in the waters of Behring’s Sea, or out of the ownership of the 
breeding islands and the habits of the seals in resorting thither and rearing their 
young thereon and going out from the islands for food, or out of any other fact or 
incident connected with the relation of those seal fisheries to the territorial posses- 
sions of the United States? 
56 6. If the determination of the foregoing questions shall leave the subject in 
such a position that the concurrence of Great Britain is necessary in prescrib- | 
ing Regulations for the killing of the fur-seal in any part of the waters of Behring’s 
Sea, then it shall be further determined: (1) How far, if at all, outside the ordinary 
territorial limits it is necessary that the United States should exercise an exclusive 
jurisdiction in order to protect the seal for the time living upon the islands of the 
United States and feeding therefrom? (2) Whether a closed season (during which 
the killing of seals in the waters of Behring’s Sea outside the ordinary territorial 
limits shall be prohibited) is necessary to save the seal fishing industry, so valuable 
and important to mankind, from deterioration or destruction? And, if so, (3) What 
months or parts of months should be included in such season, and over what waters 
it should extend? rf 
The repeated assertions that the Government of the United States demands that 
the Behring’s Sea be pronounced mare clausum are without foundation. The Govern- 
ment has never claimed it and never desired it. It expressly disavows it. At the 
same time the United States does not lack abundant authority, according to the ablest 
exponents of international law, for holding a small section of the Behring’s Sea for 
the protection of the fur-seals. Controlling a comparatively restricted area of water 
for that one specific purpose is by no means the equivalent of declaring the sea, or 
any part thereof, mare clausum. Nor is it by any means so serious an obstruction as 
Great Britain assumed to make in the South Atlantic, nor so groundless an interfer- 
ence with the common law of the sea as is maintained by British authority to-day in 
the Indian Ocean. ‘The President does not, however, desire the long postponement 
which an examination of legal authorities from Ulpian to Phillimore and Kent would 
involve. He finds his own views well expressed by Mr. Phelps, our late Minister to 
England, when, after failing to secure a just arrangement with Great Britain touch- 
ing the seal fisheries, he wrote the following in his closing communication to his own 
Government, 12th September, 1888: 
“Much learning has been expended upon the discussion of the abstract question of 
the right of mare clausum. I do not conceive it to be applicable to the present case. 
“Here is a valuable fishery, and a large and, if properly managed, permanent 
industry, the property of the nations on whose shores it is carried on. It is proposed 
by the Colony of a foreign nation, in defiance of the joint remonstrance of all the 
countries interested, to destroy this business by the indiscriminate slaughter and 
extermination of the animals in question, in the open neighbouring sea, during the 
period of gestation, when the common dictates of humanity ought to protect them, 
were there no interest at allinvolved. And it is suggested that we are prevented 
from defending ourselves against such depredations because the sea at a certain dis- 
tance from the coast is free. 
“The same line of argument would take under its protection piracy and the Slave 
Trade when prosecuted in the open sea, or would justify one nation in destroying the 
commerce of another by placing dangerous obstructions and derelicts in the open sea 
near its coasts. There are many things that cannot be allowed to be done on the open 
sea with impunity, and against which every sea is mare clausum; and the right of 
self-defense as to person and property prevails there as fully as elsewhere. If the 
fish upon the Canadian coasts could be destroyed by scattering poison in the open 
sea adjacent with some small profit to those engaged in it, would Canada, upon the 
just principles of international law, be held defenceless in such a case? Yet that 
process would be no more destructive, inhuman, and wanton than this. 
“Tf precedents are wanting for a defence so necessary and so proper, it is because 
precedents for such a course of conduct are likewise unknown. ‘The best interna- 
