or 700 miles beyond the mainland of Alaska, and clearly under the law of nations a part of the great sea and open to all nations.  Lord Salisbury’s government, from the beginning to the end of the controversy, sustained the rights of Canada as a portion of the British empire.  After very protracted and troublesome negotiations it was agreed to refer the international question in dispute to a court of arbitration, in which Sir John Thompson, prime minister of Canada, was one of the British arbitrators.  The arbitrators decided in favour of the British contention that the United States had no jurisdiction in Bering Sea outside of the three miles limit, and at the same time made certain regulations to restrict the wholesale slaughter of fur-bearing seals in the North Pacific Ocean.  In 1897 two commissioners, appointed by the governments of the United States and Canada, awarded the sum of $463,454 as compensation to Canada for the damages sustained by the fishermen of British Columbia, while engaged in the lawful prosecution of their industry on that portion of the Bering Sea declared to be open to all nations.  This sum was paid in the summer of 1898 by the United States.

In 1897 the Canadian government succeeded in obtaining the consent of the governments of Great Britain and the United States to the appointment of a joint high commission to settle various questions in dispute between Canada and the United States.  Canada was represented on this commission by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir Richard Cartwright, Sir Louis Davies, and Mr. John Charlton, M.P., Newfoundland by Sir James Winter; the United States by Messieurs C.W.  Fairbanks, George Gray, J.W.  Foster, Nelson Dingley Jr., J.A.  Kasson, and T. Jefferson Coolidge.  The eminent jurist, Baron Herschell, who had been lord chancellor in the last Gladstone ministry, was chosen chairman of this commission, which met in the historic city of Quebec on several occasions from the 23rd August until the 10th October, 1898, and subsequently at Washington from November until the 20th February, 1899, when it adjourned.  Mr. Dingley died in January and was replaced by Mr. Payne, and Lord Herschell also unhappily succumbed to the effects of an accident soon after the close of the sittings of the commission.  In an eulogy of this eminent man in the Canadian house of commons, the Canadian prime minister stated that during the sittings of the commission “he fought for Canada not only with enthusiasm, but with conviction and devotion.”  England happily in these modern times has felt the necessity of giving to the consideration of Canadian interests the services of her most astute and learned statesmen and diplomatists.