Mr. Blaine to Mr. Edwardes.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your personal note of the 12th instant, written at Washington, in which you desire to know when you may expect an answer to the request of Her Majesty’s Government, “that instructions may be sent to Alaska to prevent the possibility of the seizure of British ships in Behring Sea.”
[Page 361]I had supposed that my note of August 24 would satisfy Her Majesty’s Government of the President’s earnest desire to come to a friendly agreement touching all matters at issue between the two Governments in relation to Behring Sea, and I had further supposed that your mention of the official instruction to Sir Julian Pauncefote to proceed, immediately after his arrival in October, to a full discussion of the question, removed all necessity of a preliminary correspondence touching its merits.
Referring more particularly to the question to which you repeat the desire of your Government for an answer, I have the honor to inform you that a categorical response would have been and still is impracticable,—unjust to this Government, and misleading to the Government of Her Majesty. It was therefore the judgment of the President that the whole subject could more wisely be remanded to the formal discussion so near at hand which Her Majesty’s Government has proposed, and to which the Government of the United States has cordially assented.
It is proper, however, to add that any instruction sent to Behring Sea at the time of your original request, upon the 24th of August, would have failed to reach those waters before the proposed departure of the vessels of the United States.
I have, etc.,