condemnation before tribunals, which the United States Counsel persisted, to show their logic, in calling "Prize Courts " (but for which the AttorneyGeneral substituted "War Tribunal "); imprisonment. Have the names of Sir William Scott and Chief Justice Marshall lost their power to charm? There is no mistaking their language:-"If it be asked why the right of search does not exist in time of peace as well as in war, the answer is prompt-That it has not the same foundation on which alone it is tolerated in war-the necessities of self-defence. They introduced it in war, and practice has established it. No such necessities have introduced it in time of peace, and no such practice has established it." Such has been the language of every Judge who has spoken on the subject. And as if this was not enough, if it were necessary to pile Pelion on Ossa, there were the utterances of Presidents and Secretaries of State (carefully arranged in chronological order right through the years of the century) resisting, or protesting against search in time of peace, through which the words of the Judges echoed and re-echoed :-"The right of visitation and search is a belligerent right, and no nation which is not engaged in hostilities can have any pretence to exercise it upon the open sea." Any visitation, molestation, or detention of vessels bearing the American flag by force, or by the exhibition of force, on the part of a foreign Power is in derogation of the sovereignty of the United States." What the United States protested against at the time of the Ashburton Treaty it claimed to exercise in defence of some shadowy right which it was not necessary to put higher than, nor indeed could be put higher than, the right to an industry which every other industrial worker in the world possesses; in defence of this supposed right it asserted the legal power to exercise “those acts of high authority on the high seas which are only permitted by international law to belligerents, or only allowed to be exercised against pirates, with whom no nation is at peace.

66

The violation of the freedom of the seas has led, and will lead, nay, must lead, to war; the submission to arbitration is a victory for peace. The award will be a victory for peace, too, if, “it conform to and leave untouched and undoubted the principles of that law which have been consecrated by long usage and stamped with the approval of generations of men-that law which has, after all, grown up in response to that cry of humanity heard through all time, a cry sometimes inarticulate, sometimes drowned by the discordant voices of passion, pride, ambition, but still a cry, a prayerful cry, that has gone up through all the ages, for peace on earth and good will amongst men."

REGULATIONS PROPOSED BY THE UNITED STATES.

"The Government of the United States, in the event that the determination of the High Tribunal of certain questions described in the Seventh Article of the Treaty as 'the foregoing questions as to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States' should, as mentioned in said Seventh Article, 'leave the subject in such a condition that the concurrence of Great Britain is necessary to the establishment of Regulations for the proper protection and preservation of the fur-seal in, or habitually resorting to, Behring Sea,' submits that the following Regulations are necessary and that the same should extend over the waters hereinafter in that behalf mentioned :

"First: No citizen or subject of the United States or Great Britain shall in any manner kill, capture or pursue anywhere upon the seas, within the limits and boundaries next hereinafter prescribed for the operation of this regulation, any of the animals commonly called fur-seals.

"Second: The foregoing regulation shall apply to and extend over all those waters outside the jurisdictional limits of the abovementioned nations of the North Pacific Ocean or Behring Sea which are North of the thirty-fifth parallel of North latitude and East of the one hundred and eightieth meridian of longitude West from Greenwich. Provided, however, that it shall not apply to such pursuit and capture of said seals as may be carried on by Indians dwelling on the coasts of the territory either of Great Britain or the United States for their own personal use with spears in open canoes or boats not transported by, or used in connection with, other vessels, and propelled wholly by paddles, and manned by not more than two men each, in the way anciently practised by such Indians.

"Third: Any ship, vessel, boat or other craft (other than the canoes or boats mentioned and de-cribed in the last foregoing paragraph) belonging to the citizens or subjects of either of the nations aforesaid which may be found actually engaged in the killing, pursuit or capture of said seals, or prosecuting a voyage for that purpose, within the waters above bounded and described,

may, with her tackle, apparel, furniture, provisions and any sealskins on board, be captured and made prize of by any public armed vessel of either of the nations aforesaid; and, in case of any such capture, may be taken into any port of the nation to which the capturing vessel belongs and be condemned by proceedings in any court of competent jurisdiction, which proceedings shall be conducted, so far as may be, in accordance with the course and practice of Courts of Admiralty when sitting as Prize Courts."

REGULATIONS PROPOSED BY GREAT BRITAIN.

1. All vessels engaged in pelagic sealing shall be required to obtain licences at one or other of the following ports:

Victoria, in the province of British Columbia.
Vancouver, in the province of British Columbia.

Port Townsend, in Washington Territory in the United
States.

San Francisco, in the State of California, in the United
States.

2. Such licences shall only be granted to sailing vessels.

3. A zone of twenty miles around the Pribylof Islands shall be established, within which no seal hunting shall be permitted at any time.

4. A close season, from the 15th September to the 1st of July, shall be established, during which no pelagic sealing shall be permitted in Behring Sea.

5. No rifles or nets shall be used in pelagic sealing.

6. All sealing vessels shall be required to carry a distinguishing flag.

7. The masters in charge of sealing vessels shall keep accurate logs as to the times and places of sealing, the number and sex of the seals captured, and shall enter an abstract thereof in their official logs.

8. Licences shall be subject to forfeiture for breach of above regulations.

VII.-Regulations.

COMPLETE prohibition of pelagic sealing within four million square miles of Such is the simple little regulation which the United States proposes to the Tribunal as the solution of the whole matter.

sea.

Four million square miles of broad Pacific Ocean put under the ban! and within that area it is contemplated that "if citizens or subjects of the United States or Great Britain shall in any manner kill, capture, or pursue any of the animals commonly called fur-seals, the ships found engaged in such capture or pursuit, or prosecuting a voyage for that purpose, may, with their tackle, apparel, furniture, provisions, and any seal-skins on board, be captured and made prize of by any public armed vessel of either of the two nations, and may be taken into port and be condemned by proceedings conducted so far as may be in accordance with the course and practice of Courts of Admiralty when sitting as Prize Courts."

In order to consider the matter quite calmly and dispassionately, let us first take a map and colour in the area red, just to realise the extent of it. It is as big as Europe with the Mediterranean Sea thrown in. To this it is necessary to add, for the benefit of those who have not had the pleasure of studying seal-charts, that the waters which are "north of the 35th parallel of north latitude and east of the 180th meridian of longitude west from Greenwich" include the whole migration route of the so-called Alaskan sealherd as laid down by the United States.

One further point only needs to be remembered in order fully to realise the true nature of the United States proposal. The question of regulations is to be considered only in the event of the questions of right being determined in such a way that the concurrence of Great Britain is necessary to their validity. So that the condition precedent to the consideration of this question is the negation of the right of property or protection, which the United States claims.

Now, if in the wilder moments of a dream it were possible to imagine that this claim to property had found its warrant in law, it would carry with it, if not an inherent right of protecting the property in its wanderings, at least a right to claim from the Tribunal the protection of stringent regulations— the complete prohibition of pelagic sealing. And the area of this protective prohibition would obviously cover that area of sea through which the

wanderers regularly travel. At the very outset, therefore, the nature of the United States demand is brought home to us. With property negatived, they claim precisely what they would be entitled to demand if property had been affirmed, with this addition, that Great Britain shall assist in enforcing a regulation which can only inure to the sole benefit of the United States. Mr. Phelps has made a great point in his argument that the British case from the first has been nothing more than an elaborate defence of the pelagic sealer. En revanche, the suggested regulation appears to be only a scheme for the complete annihilation of the pelagic sealer. Now, if we look at the question merely from the point of view of the pelagic sealer, one point inevitably comes uppermost. The dispute between the two countries was about part of Behring Sea; qu'allait-il donc faire dans cette galère de Pacifique? Is it not a little bewildering to find that the mouse has brought forth the mountain?

The Behring Sea dispute in many of its aspects needed serious disputation; but how could it engender regulations operating outside the area of the dispute; to put it technically, how comes it that the Tribunal has jurisdiction to entertain, much less to adjudicate upon, any question which is not confined, and rigorously confined, to Behring Sea? It seems strange that, when a dispute has arisen about a given subject, the settlement of it should deal with a much larger subject; and yet this is precisely what the United States have asked by their extraordinary scheme of regulations. The dispute was as to the rightfulness or wrongfulness of pelagic sealing in Behring Sea, and in Behring Sea alone; that was the question, the whole question, and nothing but the question. When Great Britain suggested that the modus vivendi of 1891 should include the western as well as the eastern part of Bering Sea, it was from the United States that the answer came, that it was never supposed that an agreement for a modus vivendi could be broader than the subject of contention; and yet again on another oecasion it was the United States Minister who was directed to say that the contention between the United States and Great Britain has relation solely to the respective rights of the two Governments in the waters of Behring Sea outside ordinary territorial limits, and the stipulations for the co-operation of the two Governments during this season have, of course, the same natural limitation." And so now, when this vast area of the Pacific is brought within the United States claim, and under the condition which cannot be too often insisted on, that they have no right or title at all to the seal, Great Britain replies that the area of the dispute was Behring Sea, and that the area of its settlement must be coincident.

66

So strange a proposition deserves repetition. A dispute as to the lawfulness of pelagic sealing in Behring Sea; an interminable discussion as to whether the United States had any right to act as they had done in Behring Sea; no question as to the legality of pelagic sealing in the broad waters of