The DeSmet leader. (DeSmet, Kingsbury Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1890-09-06
Arbitration on the Seal Issues.

The Queens speech" at the open.
ing and close of each Parliament is the
work of her Ministers in fact and in
theory. 1t still remains true, how.
ever, and is likely to continue true so
long as Queen victoria remains on the
throne, says the Philadelphia Press,
that in AL WHICH relates to foreign az.
fairs the utteranCeS OF the Queen e
speech will be modified and influenced
by theknown sympathies of the sover-
eign and the personal attention which
she has always given to the diplomatic
relations of Great Britain.
This sympathy and influence, it is a
commonplace of Queen Victoria g
reign, has been steadily exercised in
favor of this country, once memor-
ably modifying Lord Palmerston's g
despatch on the Trent affair. This
circumstance adds weight to the brief
but explicit declaration on the issues
bewteen this country and Great Brit.
ain over the Alaska seal fisheries
in the speech OF week ago adjourn
ing Parliament. II have offered the
President of the United States" said
the speech, "tO submit to arbitration
the differences over the Bering Sea
fisheries"
This phrase ought and probably does
cover the entire question at issue. II
it does, our Government ought with
out technical objections to accept ar
bitration. We were ready to arbi-
trate the issues at stake in the Spring
if we could secure close season We
failed to secure either q close season
or arbitration then; but this is no rea-
son for refusing, delaying, or arguing
about it now. 1t was an unneighbor-
ly and unfriendly act for Lord Sails
bury to refuse in 1890 the close sea-
son which he had himself proposed in
1888; but if this was an act which in
frlnged on our property rights in Beh-
ring Sea we can allege our damages
and obtain an award before an inter
national tribunal-provided arbitra-
ton is obtained on an issue broad
enough to cover all the differences per
tinent to the question.
Arbitration limited to the issue that
Behring Sea is a closed sea--a theory
to which some international journal
lists are devoted-would not leave us
with leg to stand on. Outside of the
Treasury Department, in fact, our
Government has never maintained
this doctrine. All Mi. Blaine urged in.
his brilliant and conclusive despatch
was that the long exclusion of pelagic
sealing by Russia and the United
States raised the presumptive right
that this sealing was illegal and CON
trary to the comfy, if not the law, of
nations. 1t is no answer to this to
declare, as Lord Salisbury does, that
Behring Sea is not closed sea, and
that the convention OF 1925 was a
distinct disavowal of the right of Rus
sia to enforce the ukase of 1921, which
asserted the claim both of sole navi-
CATION in and of excludingseal hunters
from Behring Sea.
Our own attitude does not directly
traverse this. Mr., Blaine claims
and Lord Salisbury, now that n full
abstract of his last despatch has
reached this country, does not deny
that our property rights in the herds
OF seals in Alaskan water are of
character and SO dependent upon pro-
lection from pelagic sealing that we
have right to exercise u presumptive
and prescriptive right to exclude, not
oil navigation, as Russia proposed,
but poaching sealers.