has been once determined, that neither party would probably desire to go to the great expense and trouble of an arbitration about it, but they would either run the line by agreement or leave it to be run by a joint survey, as was once agreed between them. For if the first question were once determined in accordance with the present contention of Her Majesty's Government, Great Britain or Canada would have in her own possession such a wide and ample stretch of sea-coast, being the entirety of all inlets beyond a point crossed by a line drawn from the crests of the mountains nearest the coasts, that a few miles, or even leagues, more or less, would make no substantial difference; while, on the other hand, if that question were once determined in accordance with the uniform contention of Russia and the United States since 1825, Great Britain or Canada having no possible foothold on the sea-coast through the whole length of the strip or lisière, a few miles, or even leagues, more or less, in its width at any point, would make no very important difference to either party.

The difficulty of locating the exact boundary-line according to any interpretation of the Treaty was in great measure removed by the Report and maps of the joint survey created by agreement of Great Britain and the United States in 1892. || Before taking up your Lordship's review of the facts and incidents since the date of the Treaty between Great Britain and Russia, which are cited as confirming the view that the question of the interpretation of the Treaty has been always open, I venture, with deference, to ask whether, in that review, the distinction which I have drawn between the question of the interpretation of the Treaty and the question of the actual demarcation of the boundary-line has not been lost sight of, for it appears very clearly to me that nearly all of them recognize as an open question the actual demarcation of the line, which must remain open until it is actually accomplished, and that they do not suggest or assume that the question of the interpretation of the Treaty now raised and insisted upon by Great Britain was open. It would be strange, indeed, if Her Majesty's Government, at the time of the exchange of the Treaty with Russia or the Russian Government of that day could have regarded the question now raised by Great Britain as left open, or that any question under the Treaty was left doubtful or open for future determination, except the actual demarcation of the boundary-line so as to carry out the spirit and intent of the Treaty as well known to them both and freshly in their minds from the protracted and very earnest struggle which they had had over its terms. || One persistent effort of Her Majesty's Representatives in that

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negotiation was to get to the sea, in the interest of the Hudson's Bay Company. The equally persistent effort of the Representatives of Russia was to set up a barrier in a strip of land which should keep Great Britain away from the sea at all points from the southern end of Prince of Wales Island to Mount St. Elias, so that the Russian establishments on the islands and the coast belonging to the Russian-American Company could by no possibility be interfered with, a point which the negotiators on behalf of Great Britain expressly and finally yielded. || I may not properly here enter upon an analysis of the protracted negotiations which culminated in the Treaty of 1825. They are now very familiar, and as we claim the whole course of the negotiation shows that the British Plenipotentiaries, and Mr. Secretary Canning as well, had a perfectly clear conception of the lisière upon which Russia insisted so strenuously

that it was to be Russia's impenetrable barrier to any alien access to or from the inner region of the mainland, a strip of territory running parallel to the sinuosities of the coast, and necessarily around the inlets and not across their mouths, extending at all points from the water's edge to the interior possessions of Great Britain, beginning at the point of the continent where the line, ascending to the north along Portland Channel, strikes the 56th degree of north latitude and extending to the intersection of the 141 st meridian. It constituted a definite expanse of territory over which, and over the tide water along it, as well as over the islands outside of it, Russia possessed an exclusive jurisdiction the same which she afterwards conveyed in its entirety to the United States. It could be pierced in favour of Great Britain only by rivers having their origin in British dominions, and flowing through the Russian territorial strip to tide water; and as to these, no lodgment on the Russian shore, but only access to the interior, was granted to Great Britain. The provisions as to this strip of land in the Vth and VIth Articles of the original Treaty, where it is referred to as „la lisière de terre ferme“ and „lisière de la côte," must have been understood by the negotiators on both sides in the same sense. || And the fact that, by the VIIth Article of the Treaty, Russia gave, and Great Britain took, a licence for British vessels for ten years from the date of the Treaty to frequent toutes les mers intérieures, les golfes, havres, et criques sur la côte" proves that the negotiators on both sides must have understood that all these interior waters, &c., were in Russian territory. || In view of this, we claim and insist that when the Treaty was signed the question now raised and pressed by Her Majesty's Government whether the lisière ran around the inlets or sinuosities of the coast or across their mouths was not left

open or understood by the negotiators on either side, or by either Government for which they acted, as an open question, and if not then left open, it was certainly never attempted to be opened until 1885 and, as we claim, not until 1898. Of course, the actual demarcation of the line, with whatever difficulties pertained to it, according to the spirit and meaning of the Treaty, was necessarily left open, and could only be determined after the country was explored by competent survey. || Coming now to the references to the boundary question in subsequent correspondence between the Governments, which your Lordship regards as having been always upon the admitted basis that the whole line was undetermined, and that the interpretation of the boundary Articles of the Treaty was entirely an open question, I submit that in each instance, especially in view of what had preceded during Russia's ownership, these references indicated or assumed no more than that the whole line was undetermined in the sense of not having been surveyed and marked, but not that the interpretation of the Treaty on the main point now under consideration was in any sense open. || Immediately after the making of the Treaty, the Russian Government proceeded with the preparation of a map, showing the respective possessions of Russia and Great Britain as fixed by the Treaty. This map was published in St. Petersburgh in 1827 by order of His Imperial Majesty. It runs the boundary-line from the head of Portland Channel at a distance of 10 marine leagues from tide water around the head of all the inlets to the 141 st meridian. And along this line upon the map is inscribed the words: „Limites des possessions Russes et Anglaises d'après le Traité de 1825." There could have been no more direct and peremptory challenge to Great Britain, if its Government at that time regarded the interpretation of the Treaty as having been left an open question at the time of its signature, or as being then an open question as to which each Government was free to urge its own views. || The great importance of this location of the boundary as between the two nations, as represented respectively by the Hudson's Bay Company and the Russian-American Company, must have been still very fresh and vivid upon the minds of His Majesty's Ministers who had negotiated and concluded the Treaty, Russia thus proclaiming to them and to the world a clear and emphatic interpretation of the Treaty which conformed to that which the negotiators on both sides had put upon it. Was not that the time and the last time for Great Britain to speak? Could her Government lie by without a protest, and at any time afterwards claim a different interpretation which would nullify the whole object of Russia in making the Treaty? But Great Britain did

not merely lie by without a protest: she and Canada also expressly adopted this location of the boundary exactly as Russia had defined it. In 1831 the map prepared by Bouchette, Deputy Surveyor-General of the Province of Lower Canada, „published as the Act directs by James Wild, Geographer to the King, London, the 2nd May, 1831," traces the Russian boundary on the continent exactly according to the Russian Imperial Map of 1827. And in 1832 the map of Arrowsmith, the most authoritative cartographer of London, whose earlier map had been used by the negotiators of the Treaty, does exactly the same thing, stating upon its face that it contains the latest information which the documents of the Hudson's Bay Company furnish. And it will hardly be questioned that at that time the Hudson's Bay Company possessed all powers of Government in the British territory in that region, and was in fact the only British authority there. Can it be claimed that at the time of the publication of that map, apparently by the authority of the Hudson's Bay Company and of the British Government at any rate, without a protest from either - they then regarded the interpretation of the Treaty on this cardinal point as an open question? | And on Canadian authority maps were subsequently published defining the boundary in the same way, excluding Great Britain from all access to tide water along the whole extent of the line - notably, Devine's Map, published „by order of the Honourable Joseph Cauchon, Commissioner of Crown Lands, Crown Department, Toronto, March, 1857." All the map makers of the world followed suit, and a careful search has failed to discover any map published anywhere prior to 1884, in which this boundary-line did not conform to the original Russian Imperial Map of 1827.

Your Lordship suggests that the only value of that region during the period from 1825 to 1867 lay in the fur trade; that by the terms of the Treaty that trade was thrown open on equal terms for ten years. to the citizens of Great Britain, Russia, and the United States; that before the ten years expired the negotiations between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Russian-American Company, which resulted in the lease by the latter to the former of the lisière, had been initiated; and that as that lease, though made at first for ten years, by renewals terminated on the date when Alaska was ceded to the United States, it was a matter of indifference to that Company whether it derived its rights from its British Charter or from the Russian lease. But to me it is hardly conceivable that the Hudson's Bay Company, backed by the whole power and prestige of the British Government, would, with its

approval, have accepted that lease if either the Company or the Government had had the least idea that, under the Treaty of 1825, they were entitled, as of right, to what they took by lease and to what Canada now claims; and so I insist, with renewed earnestness, that the takings of that lease and the renewals were declarations to the world that neither regarded as open the contention now made on behalf of Canada. || The information conveyed in your Lordship's note, that before the expiration of the ten years' licence provided in the VIIth Article of the Treaty, negotiations had been initiated between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Russian-American Company for the lease of the lisière, which appears to have been signed at Hamburg on the 6th February, 1839, and that by renewals it was terminated only on the date when Alaska was ceded to the United States, is the first to that effect that my Government has received. All the data in its possession, including the Alaska archives now in the State Department, had indicated that the negotiations for the lease had been brought about in the latter part of the year 1838, three years after the expiration of the ten years, by a note from the British Ambassador in St. Petersburgh, revising the claim of the „Dryad"—and the last record in the Alaskan archives of a renewal of it only extends it to 1865. But assuming your Lordship's information to be more accurate, we submit that both circumstances show that neither before the commencement of the lease, nor at its termination, did the Hudson's Bay Company or the British Government, which is so fully represented, regard the question now under consideration as open, or that the premises covered by the lease were in British territory: for in the one case they would have entered upon no negotiations before the expiration of the licence, and in the other would not have yielded possession without protest or murmur, but in both cases would have held on as of right. || What took place in 1857, following the appointment of a Select Committee in the House of Commons, „to consider the state of those British possessions in North America which are under the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, or over which they possess a licence to trade," is extremely significant to show that no one concerned on the part of the Company or the Committee had any doubt about the interpretation of the Treaty on the point now being discussed. Among the members of the Committee were Lord John Russell, Lord Stanley, Mr. Roebuck, M. Gladstone, and Mr. Ellice, who was a native of Canada and a Director of the Hudson's Bay Company. Chief Justice Draper, of Canada, attended its session as the Representative of the Government of Canada; Sir George Simpson, Governor of the territory and President of the Company, was