944 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
assented to by them. In their opinion, it implies an admission of a doctrine respect- 
ing the liabilities of Governments for the acts of their nationals or other persons 
sailing under their flag on the high seas, for which there is no warrant in the law of 
nations. Thus it contains the following words: 
«The Government of the United States having presented on its own behalf, as 
well as of the lessees of the privilege of taking seals on the Pribyloff Islands, claims 
for compensation by reason of the killing of seals in Behring’s Sea by persons acting 
under the protection of the British flag, the Arbitrators shall consider and decide 
upon such claim.’ 
‘“‘These words involve the proposition that Her Majesty’s Government are liable 
to make good losses resulting from the wrongful action of persons sailing outside 
their jurisdiction under the British flag. Her Majesty’s Government could not accept 
such a doctrine.” 
The President cannot believe that, while holding this view of its accountability, 
the Government of Great Britain will, pending the arbitration, countenance, much 
less justify or defend, the continuance of pelagic sealing by its subjects. It should 
either assume responsibility for the acts of these sealers, or restrain them from a 
pursuit the lawfulness of which is to be determined by the arbitration. 
In your note of the 29th February you state that Her Majesty’s Government has 
been informed by the British Commissioners ‘‘ that, so far as pelagic sealing is con- 
cerned, there is no danger of serious diminution of the fur-seal species as a conse- 
quence of this year’s hunting,” and upon this ground Lord Salisbury places his 
refusal to renew the modus of last year. His Lordship seems to assume a determina- 
tion of the arbitration against the United States and in favour of Great Britain, and 
that it is already only a question of so regulating a common right to take seals as to 
preserve the species; by what right does he do this? Upon what principle does he 
assume thatif our claims are established, any diminution of the seals, whether serious 
or not, during this season, or indeed, any taking of seals, is to be without recom- 
pense? In the opinion of the President, it is not consistent with good faith that 
either party to an arbitration should, pending a decision, in any degree diminish the 
value of the subject of arbitration or take any profit from the use of it without an 
agreement to account. 
Before an agreement for arbitration had been reached, the prohibition of pelagic 
sealing was a matter of comity; from the moment of the signing of that Agreement 
it became, in his opinion, a matter of obligation. 
During the season of 1891, notwithstanding the restrictions resulting from the modus 
adopted, the Canadian sealers took, in the Behring’s Sea alone, 28,763 skins, or nearly 
four times as many as the restricted catch upon our island. This Government is now 
advised that fifty-one vessels from British Columbia and sixteen from Nova Scotia 
have sailed, or are about to sail, for the Behring’s Sea to engage in taking seals. 
This large increase in the fleet engaged makes it certain, in the absence of an effect- 
ive restrictive agreement, that the destruction of seal life during this season by 
pelagic sealing will be unprecedented, and will, in the opinion of our Com- 
163 missioners, so nearly destroy the value of the seal fisheries as to make what 
willremain of so little value as scarcely to be a worthy subject for international 
arbitration. 
The proposition of Lord Salisbury, to prohibit the killing of seals at sea “‘ within 
a zone extending to not more than 30 nautical miles around the Pribyloff Islands,” 
is so obviously inadequate and so impossible of execution that this Government can- 
not entertain it. In the early part of the discussion of the subject of a modus for 
last year this method was tentatively suggested, among others, in conversation 
between yourself and Mr. Blaine. But it was afterwards, in effect, agreed by both 
Governments to be inadequate, and was not again referred to in the correspondence. 
In the Memorandum furnished by you with your note of the §th June you say, 
“Lord Salisbury points out that if seal-hunting be probibited on one side of a purely 
imaginary line drawn in the open ocean, while it is permitted on the other side of 
the line, it will be impossible in many cases to prove unlawful sealing, or to infer it 
from the possession of skins or fishing tackle.” 
This was said with reference to the water boundary of our purchase from Russia, 
but it is quite as applicable to the 30-mile zone which he now suggests. The preva- 
lence of fogs in these waters gives increased force and conclusiveness to the point 
made by his Lordship against an imaginary water-line. 
The President cannot agree, now that the terms of arbitration have been settled, 
that the restrictions imposed shall be less than those which both Governments deemed 
to be appropriate when it was still uncertain whether an early adjustment of the 
controversy was attainable. He therefore hopes that Her Majesty’s Government 
will consent to renew the arrangement of last year with the promptness which the 
exigency demands, and to agree to enforce it by refusing all clearances to sealing- 
vessels for the prohibited waters, and by recalling from those waters all auch vessels 
as have already cleared. 
