Mr. Blaine to Sir Julian Pauncefote.
Sir: I regret that circumstances beyond my control have postponed my reply to your two notes of June 30th, which were received on the 1st instant, on the eve of my leaving Washington for this place. The note which came to hand on the forenoon of that day inclosed a dispatch from Lord Salisbury, in which his lordship, referring to my note of May 29th, expresses “a wish to point out some errors” which he thinks I “had gathered from the records in my office.”
The purpose of Lord Salisbury is to show that I misapprehended the facts of the case when I represented him, in my note of May 29, as having given such “verbal assurances” to Mr. Phelps as warranted the latter in expecting a convention to be concluded between the two Governments for the protection of the seal fisheries in Behring Sea.
Speaking directly to this point his lordship says:
Mr. Blaine is under a misconception in imagining that I ever gave any verbal assurance or any promise of any kind with respect to the terms of the proposed convention.
In answer to this statement I beg you will say to Lord Salisbury that I simply quoted, in my note of May 29, the facts communicated by our minister, Mr. Phelps, and our chargé d’affaires, Mr. White, who are responsible for the official statements made to this Government at different stages of the seal fisheries negotiation.
On the 25th day of February, 1888, as already stated in my note of May 29th, Mr. Phelps sent the following intelligence to Secretary Bayard, viz:
Lord Salisbury assents to your proposition to establish by mutual arrangement between the Governments interested a close time for fur-seals between April 15th and November 1st in each year, and between 160 degrees of longitude west, and 170 degrees of longitude east in the Behring Sea. And he will cause an act to be introduced in Parliament to give effect to this arrangement, so soon as it can be prepared. In his opinion there is no doubt that the act will be passed. He will also join the United States Government in any preventive measures it may be thought best to adopt by orders issued to the naval vessels of the respective Governments in that region.
Mr. Phelps has long been known in this country as an able lawyer, accurate in the use of words and discriminating in the statement of facts. The Government of the United States necessarily reposes implicit confidence in the literal correctness of the dispatch above quoted.
Some time after the foregoing conference between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Phelps had taken place, his lordship invited the Russian ambassador, M. de Staal, and the American chargé, Mr. White (Mr. Phelps being absent from London), to a conference held at the foreign office on the 16th of April, touching the Behring Sea controversy. This conference was really called at the request of the Russian ambassador, who desired that Russian rights in the Behring Sea should be as fully recognized by England as American rights had been recognized in the verbal agreement of February 25 between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Phelps. The Russian ambassador received from Lord Salisbury the assurance (valuable also to the United States), that the protected area for seal life should be extended southward to the 47th degree of north latitude, and also the promise that he would have “a draught [Page 454] convention prepared for submission to the Russian ambassador and the American chargé.”
Lord Salisbury now contends that all the proceedings at the conference of April 16 are to be regarded as only “provisional, in order to furnish a basis for negotiation, and without definitely pledging our Government.” While the understanding of this Government differs from that maintained by Lord Salisbury, I am instructed by the President to say that the United States is willing to consider all the proceedings of April 16, 1888, as canceled, so far as American rights may be concerned. This Government will ask Great Britain to adhere only to the agreement made between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Phelps on the 25th of February, 1888. That was an agreement made directly between the two Governments and did not include the rights of Russia. Asking Lord Salisbury to adhere to the agreement of February 25, we leave the agreement of April 16 to be maintained, if maintained at all, by Russia, for whose cause and for whose advantage it was particularly designed.
While Lord Salisbury makes a general denial of having given “verbal assurances,” he has not made a special denial touching the agreement between himself and Mr. Phelps, which Mr. Phelps has reported in special detail, and the correctness of which he has since specially affirmed on more than one occasion.
In your second note of June 30, received in the afternoon of July 1, you called my attention (at Lord Salisbury’s request) to a statement, which I made in my note of June 4 to this effect:
It is evident, therefore, that in 1888 Lord Salisbury abruptly closed the negotiation because, in his own phrase, “the Canadian Government objected.”
To show that there were other causes for closing the negotiation Lord Salisbury desires that attention be called to a remark made to him by Mr. Phelps on the 3d day of April, 1888, as follows: “Under the peculiar circumstances of America at this moment, with a general election impending, it would be of little use and indeed hardly practicable to conduct any negotiation to its issue before the general election has taken place.”
I am quite ready to admit that such a statement made by Mr. Phelps might now be adduced as one of the reasons for breaking off the negotiation, if in fact the negotiation had been then broken off, but Lord Salisbury immediately proceeded with the negotiation. The remark ascribed to Mr. Phelps was made, as Lord Salisbury states, on the 3d of April, 1888. On the 5th of April Mr. Phelps left London on a visit to the United States. On the 6th of April Lord Salisbury addressed a private note to Mr. White to meet the Russian ambassador at the foreign office, as he had appointed a meeting for April 16 to discuss the questions at issue concerning the seal fisheries in Behring Sea.
On the 23d of April there was some correspondence in regard to an order in council and an act of Parliament. On the 27th of April Under Secretary Barrington, of the foreign office, in an official note, informed Mr. White that “the next step was to bring in an act of Parliament.”
On the 28th of April Mr. White was informed that an act of Parliament would be necessary in addition to the order in council, but that “neither act nor order could be draughted until Canada is heard from.”
Mr. Phelps returned to London on the 22d of June, and immediately took up the subject, earnestly pressing Lord Salisbury to come to a conclusion. On the 28th of July he telegraphed his Government expressing the “fear that owing to Canadian opposition we shall get no convention.”
[Page 455]On the 12th of September Mr. Phelps wrote to Secretary Bayard that Lord Salisbury had stated that “the Canadian Government objected to any such restrictions [as those asked for the protection of the seal fisheries], and that until Canada’s consent could be obtained, Her Majesty’s Government was not willing to enter into the convention.
I am justified, therefore, in assuming that Lord Salisbury can not recur to the remark of Mr. Phelps as one of the reasons for breaking off the negotiation, because the negotiation was in actual progress for more than four months after the remark was made, and Mr. Phelps himself took large part in it.
Upon this recital of facts I am unable to recall or in any way to qualify the statement which I made in my note of June 4th, to the effect that Lord Salisbury “abruptly closed the negotiation because the Canadian Government objected, and that he assigned no other reason whatever.”
Lord Salisbury expresses the belief that even if the view I have taken of these transactions be accurate they would not bear out the argument which I found upon them. The argument to which Lord Salisbury refers is, I presume, the remonstrance which I made by direction of the President against the change of policy by Her Majesty’s Government without notice and against the wish of the United States. The interposition of the wishes of a British province against the conclusion of a convention between two nations, which, according to Mr. Phelps, “had been virtually agreed upon except as to details,” was in the President’s belief a grave injustice to the Government of the United States.
I have, etc.,