Sir Julian Pauncefote to Mr. Blaine.
Washington, March 7, 1892.
Sir: With reference to my note of the 29th ultimo, in which I had the honor to inform you that the Marquis of Salisbury had received no information to show the necessity for renewing, during the approaching fishery season, the modus vivendi of last year in Behring Sea as proposed in your note to me of the 24th ultimo, I think it opportune to remind you of the following fact in connection with that modus vivendi which may have escaped your attention, as you were absent from Washington at the time of its negotiation.
In the course of the correspondence which then took place it was distinctly [Page 621] notified to your Government that the modus vivendi would not be renewed for the following season. You will find that, at the close of the memorandum inclosed in my note to Mr. Wharton of June 6, 1891, I stated under instructions from my Government that “the suspension of sealing was not a measure which they could repeat another year.”
Her Majesty’s Government consented to that measure in consequence of the rumors widely circulated of impending danger to the seal species. But since then the conditions of the fur-seal fishery have been investigated on the spot by experts appointed for that purpose by Her Majesty’s Government. Those experts have advised that there is no danger of any serious diminution of the fur-seal species from pelagic sealing during the present year, and that to renew the prohibition of pelagic sealing for another season would be going far beyond the necessities of the case.
Lord Salisbury’s proposal of a 30–mile radius round the Pribyloff Islands within which no sealing should be allowed is a judicious temporary measure of precaution pending the establishment of permanent regulations for the fishery as a whole. It is a somewhat larger proposal than that which you originally made to me on the 16th of March, 1891, and which was for a similar radius of 25 miles only.
The reason why you subsequently abandoned that “radius” proposal is stated in your note to me of 4th May, 1891. That reason was not that such a radius would be ineffectual, but that “it might possibly provoke conflict in the Behring Sea.”
At that time no act of Parliament had been passed in England to empower Her Majesty’s Government to enforce such a measure on British vessels, and no doubt there was some danger on that account of it giving rise to difficulties. But it is otherwise now. By the seal fishery (Behring Sea) act, 1891 (54 Vic., c. 19), Her Majesty is empowered by order in council to prohibit under severe penalties the catching of seals by British ships in any part of Behring Sea defined by the order, and therefore the enforcement of the new modus vivendi now proposed by Lord Salisbury would present much less difficulty than was experienced last season in putting the existing one into operation.
I trust that the above observations which I venture to offer in further elucidation of the proposal contained in my note of the 29th ultimo will satisfy your Government that it is, under the circumstances, a reasonable proposal, and one which will, if acceded to, sufficiently safeguard the interests of both nations during the few months comprised in the next fishery season and pending the decision of the arbitrators.
I have, etc.,