694 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
Mr. Blaine made his first proposal on the 16th March. He then stated 
that, as there now seemed to be a prospect of agreeing to the terms of 
an arbitration, it was desirable to arrange for a modus vivendi pending 
its result, and he threw out a suggestion of a radius of 25 miles within 
which sealing-vessels should be prohibited from approaching the seal 
islands. I acquainted your Lordship with that proposalin my telegram 
of the 16th March. 
About a fortnight afterwards, at an interview which Mr. Blaine was 
good enough to give me at his house when he was confined by indis- 
position, he reverted to the subject of the modus vivendi, and he asked 
me to ascertain whether your Lordship would prefer as an alternative 
proposal that the killing of seals should be stopped both at sea and on 
Jand pending the result of the arbitration. 
IT should here observe that for some time past I had been pressing 
Mr. Blaine most urgently, but in vain, for a reply to your Lordship’s 
despatch of the 21st February, in which certain modifications were 
proposed in the questions which he had formulated in his note of the 
17th December, 1890, for the purposes of the arbitration. The delay 
in returning a reply to your Lordship’s despatch appeared to me dis- 
quieting, and he spoke somewhat despondingly in the presence of Sir 
Charles Tupper of the prospect of an adjustment of the questions for 
arbitration. I therefore informed Mr. Blaine that I hesitated to trans- 
mit to your Lordship any further proposals respecting a modus vivendt 
until there was reason to believe that the arbitration proposals con- 
tained in your Lordship’s despatch above referred to would be accepted; 
and I suggested that the most satisfactory course would be for him to 
make his proposals for a modus vivendi concurrently with his reply to 
that despatch. 
Mr. Blaine assented to my suggestion, and said that he would ‘ pro- 
ceed ia that order.” But neither in his reply to your Lordship’s 
despatch, which was delivered on the 14th April, nor in the substituted 
note delivered the 27th April, is there anything to be found in relation 
to a modus vivendi. In the meanwhile, I had informed your Lordship 
privately, by the mail of the 7th April, of Mr. Blaine’s alternative pro- 
posal for the cessation of seal-killing both at sea and on land, and on 
receipt of your Lordship’s telegram of the 17th April, I addressed a 
note to him, of which I had the honour to inclose a copy in my despatch 
of the 27th April. 
In that despatch I reported the difficulties which were afterwards 
raised by the President and by Mr. Blaine, and which appeared to me 
to render hopeless the timely application of the proposed modus vivendi. 
Since then, as before stated, the subject has been discussed in the pub- 
lic press. 
The opposition journals criticize severely the non-publication of Pro- 
fessor Elliott’s Report on the condition of the seal islands during the 
season of 1890, and also the dismissal of Mr. Goff, the Treasury A gent 
in charge of the islands, who had last summer exercised his official 
authority to stop the killing of seals by the Company, owing to the 
indiscriminate slaughter practised there, and to the alarming diminu- 
tion of seal life. Mr. Blaine is violently attacked by those journals for 
hesitating to put in force at once the proposed modus vivendi in the face 
of the Reports of the United States’ Government Agents, and in view 
of the readiness of Her Majesty’s Government to accept the proposal. 
I have, Xe. 
(Signed) JULIAN PAUNCEFOTE, 
