Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-05-08

WASHINGTON, May line following note
in addition to the correspondence that has
already passed in relation to the Behring
sea controversy is made public:
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, !
WASHINGTON, d. c., April II, 1891
NJ. Blaine to Sir Julian Paunceforte:
SIR-The notifications which Lord Sails
bury suggests in the questions for arbitra-
tion do not wholly meet the views
of the president, but the president changes
the text of the third and fifth in such
matter as will result in an agreement be-
tween the two governments. While Lord
Salisbury suggests different mode of pro-
cedure from that embodied in the sixth
question, the president does not understand
him actually to object to the question, and
he therefore assumes that it is agreed to-
The six questions as proposed by the
president have already been published.
The third and fifth as changed by him read:
8. Was the body of water known as
Rehring sea included in the phrase Pacific
ocean," as used in the treaty of 1925 be-
tween Great Britain and Russia, and what
rights, if any, in Behring sea were held
and exclusively exercised by Russia after
said treaty?
s. Has the United States any right, and
if so what right, of protection of the prop
erty in fur seals frequenting the islands of
the United States in Behring sea, when
such seals are found outside the ordinary
three mile limit?
The president does not object to the addi-
tional question respecting alleged damages
to English ships proposed by Lord Sal
isbury, if one Canadian can be added,
namely, that after the issues Of arbitration
are joined,if the United States shall
prevail all seals taken by Canadian
vessels during the period shall be paid for
at the ordinary price for which skins are
sold. This seems to the president to be the
complement of Lord Salisbury:s PROPOSE
ton, and he doubts not that it will secure
his lordstip's assent.
In the first paragraph of Lord Salisbury's
dispatch of February 81 he makes the fol-
lowing declaration: 1t is row quite clear
that the advisors Of the president do not
and indeed that they repudiate
that contention in express terms
Lord Salisbury's expression is put in such
form as to imply whether he so intended it
I know not) that the United States had
hitherto been resting the contention upon
the fact that the Behring Sea was mare
clausum. II that was his intention it
would have been well for his lordship to
specify wherein the United States ever made
the assertion. The emphatic denial in my
dispatch of December II, last, was intended
to put an end to the reiteration of the
charge and to eliminate it from the current
discussion.
Lord SAILS bury complains that did not
deal with certain protests written by Lord
Londonderry and the Duke of Wellington
in 1922 which he had before quoted
If he will refer to the twenty-sixth and
tweuty-seventh pages Of my dispatch of
December II, he will observe that l
specially dealt with these maintain what
I think is proved from the the text that
there was not a single word in those
protests referring to the Behring sea,
but that they. referred in the language
Of the Duke Of Wellington of the 18th Of
October, 1922 only to the lands extending
along the shores Of the Pacific ocean from
latitude 80 deg. to latitude 60 deg north"
In the opinion Of the president, Lord Sal
isbmy is wholly and strangely in error in
making the following statement: ''Nor do
they (the advisors of the president). rely
as a justification for the seizure
CT British ships in open sea
upon the contention that property interests
of the seal fisheries give to the United
States government any right for that pur-
pose which, according to international law,
it would not otherwise possess 1"
The government of the United States has
steadily maintained just the reverse of the
proposition which Lord Salisbury has in
puted to If Il holds that the ownership of
the islands upon which the seals breed,
that the habit Of the seals in regularly re-
sorting thither and rearing their
young thereon, that their going
ont from the islands in search of food and
regularly returning thereto, and all the
facts aud incidents Of their relation to the