284 INVESTIGATION OF THE PUE-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



If Liebes tells the truth, Moss must have died almost immediately 

 after this sworn deposition in 1892 was made by him as above cited 

 and quoted in volume 5, Proceedings Tribunal Arbitration, 1893, 

 pages 670, 671. 



Liebes swears that Moss, who "died" in 1893, had no successor for 

 his place as the "resident agent of H. Liebes & Co." He asks the 

 committee to believe that a business of "buying from ten to twenty 

 thousand pelagic fur sealskins annually" from the hunters at Vic- 

 toria, B. C, was abandoned by the Liebes when Moss died. (Vol. 

 2, Proceedings Tribunal Arbitration, 1893, p. 341; see Morris Moss's 

 deposition.) 



That Liebes had not only had an agent in Victoria busy in buying 

 pelagic sealskins, but also, like Moss, a member of the Victoria Seal- 

 ers' Association, immediately after Moss's death up to the day that 

 the Hay-Elliot treaty went into effect, December 15, 1911, will be 

 found a matter of business record in Victoria when a competent 

 search for it is made. 



H. H. D. Peirce under oath admits that he knew that the Liebes were 

 the owners of the James Hamilton Lewis. (Hearing No. 13, pp. 779- 

 782, May 29, 1911, House Committee on Expenditures in the Depart- 

 ment of Commerce and Labor.) This admission is made by him, to 

 wit: 



The Committee on Expenditures in the 



Department op Commerce and Labor, 



House op Representatives, 



Wednesday, May 29, 1912. 



The committee this day met, Hon. John H. Rothermel (chairman) presiding. 



STATEMENT OF MR. H. H. D. PEIRCE. 



The witness was duly sworn by the chairman. 



The Chairman. What is your full name? 



Mr. Peirce. Herbert Henry Davis Peirce. 



The Chairman. What is your profession? 



Mr. Peirce. I am a diplomat. 



The Chairman. "Well, you are a lawyer by profession? 



Mr. Peirce. An international lawyer; I am not a member of the bar. 



The Chairman. What is your present occupation? 



Mr. Peirce. I am one of the counsel for the Government in the American-British 

 Claims Arbitration. 



The Chairman. What was your position with the Government some years ago? 



Mr. Peirce. I was first secretary of legation at St. Petersburg, and after it became 

 an embassy, secretary of embassy. I was the Third Assistant Secretary of State. 



The Chairman. You may tell the committee what the real issue was before the tri- 

 bunal as to the James Hamilton Lewis case. 



Mr. Peirce. The Russian Government had seized the James .Hamilton Lewis for 

 poaching, as they call it, seals on the Copper Island. The James Hamilton Lewis was 

 arrested outside of the 3-mile limit. She was on her way; the captain alleged that 

 the weather was thick, and that he had proceeded to Copper Island in order to get his 

 bearing — whether that is true or not I do not know, but it was a thing disputed — and 

 there was lying off around the southern extremity of Copper Island a Russian cruiser 

 which the master of the James Hamilton Lewis could not see, and as he came up toward 

 the island he must have been pretty well within the 3-mile limit, for if he saw the 

 vessel he certainly could have seen the island; the cruiser came around the point, and 

 then McLean, who was the master of the James Hamilton Lewis, tinned tail and sailed 

 away. 



The cruiser pursued her and pursued her beyond the 3-mile limit and there seized 

 her. I claimed for the owners and officers and crew tl at her presence in Russian 

 waters was innocent, that there was no corpus delicti, that she had gone there for a 



Eerfectly reasonable purpose, and was merely exercising the rights that any vessel 

 ad, and that her pursuit and capture beyond the 3-mile limit was a violation of her 

 right to sail upon any sea. 



