878 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
104 APPENDIX (B). 
Memorial. 
To the Most Noble the Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary 
of State for Foreign Affairs, Premier. 
The humble Memorial of the undersigned British Columbia Ship-owners 
interested in Fur-seal hunting, 
Most respectfully sheweth: 
That your memorialists desire to approach your Lordship with assurances of their 
loyalty to the British Crown, their attachment to the institutions of their country, 
and their personal respect for your Lordship. 
That, cherishing such sentiments, your memorialists have viewed with surprise 
and pain the recent action of the Imperial Government in dealing with their interests, 
That an Act prohibiting fur-seal hunting in Behring’s Sea has been passed through 
Parliament, and has received the Royal Assent with unusual haste, whose effect has 
been to protect a large politico-commercial monopoly, belonging to a foreign State, 
at the expense and to the serious detriment of British interests. 
That your memorialists regret that you can have no confidence in the sincerity of 
the United States Government in desiring the protection of fur-seals, inasmuch as 
they have never made any effort to preserve animal life from the licence of their own 
citizens. 
That at the present time they are conniving at the extermination of the whale 
and the sea-otter, Canadian fishermen having no part or share in those industries, 
and that your memorialists confidently believe that, had not Canadians shared in 
the fur-seal fishery, no complaint of extermination would ever have been heard of 
by the public. 
That such Government, judged by its actions, has established little claim to any 
generosity or forbearance on the part of the British, but more especially of the 
Canadian people. ae 
That the allegation publicly made by a prominent statesman that the Victoria, 
British Columbia, fur-seal industry is largely conducted by American capital and 
enterprise, is, so far as your memorialists are concerned, absolutely erroneous and 
without foundation. 
That your memorialists have seen, with humiliation and sorrow, the flag of their 
country, to which they have ever been accustomed to look for protection, perverted 
on the behest of a foreign Power from its legitimate functions into an instrument of 
oppression, and your memorialists have been driven from their lawful avocations on 
the high seas with the loss of the entire season. 
That in the year 1886 vessels, the property of your memorialists, were seized by 
the American cruizers on the high seas, upwards of 60 miles distant from land, their 
property confiscated and their crews imprisoned, the hardships and cruelties (unwor- 
thy of a civilized nation) suffered by them resulting in the death, during his cus- 
tody, of the captain of one of the vessels, and that to this day the losses and 
indignities endured by your memorialists remain unredressed. 
That the alleged diminution in the number of seals is, if true (although every 
evidence proves the contrary), far more likely to have resulted from the operations 
of the lessees of the Pribyloff Islands in slaughtering them by hundreds of thou- 
sands at their breeding-places, than from the comparatively insignificant operations 
of your memorialists, scattered over a vast area of the Pacific Ocean. 
That under all the circumstances of the case, your memorialists having been 
deprived of the profits of their whole season’s business, for which they were per- 
mitted to clear at British Custom-houses, most earnestly appeal to your Lordship’s 
sense of right and justice to grant them compensation for their losses. 
That it is the custom of the trade to pay hunters engaged in it at a rate of so much 
per skin for all skins taken, and sailors at so much per month, the voyage generally 
lasting until about the end of September. 
That many of your memorialists’ vessels have been in port for weeks, their voyage 
ended, and crews paid off at rates wholly inadequate to their winter maintenance, 
and in many cases insufficient to pay their passages back to Eastern Canada, where 
their homes are. 
That in asking compensation your memorialists have in view the losses of their 
men as well as their own, and if awarded compensation on the basis hereinafter 
suggested, will undertake to pay all hunters and sailors employed by them at such 
rates as they would have been entitled to receive had the usual average number of 
seals been taken in Behring’s Sea, and the voyage been completed at the end of 
September. 
That your memorialists respectfully suggest, as the only equitable method of com- 
puting such compensation, that they be allowed the value at current prices of such 
number of seal-skins as they would presumably have killed in Behring’s Sea had 
cnet 
ss 
Sp ae ape Oe 
a ee 
