Mr. Blaine appears to be resolute in his purpose to
force a quarrel with Great Britain on the subject of the right to seize British sealing-vessels in the Behring Sea. At least the United States Revenue cutter Rush' has committed another series of what we cannot but regard as outrages of this kind,—outrages not only on British ships, but on the view of international law on which United States lawyers have always hitherto insisted. On July 30th, the British schooner AMe Alger' was boarded and searched by the Rush,' with- out any sealskins being discovered, though, as it is stated, there were 300 on board. The officer of the Revenue cutter stated that he had also seized the Pathfinder' with 800 seal- skins, and the Minnie' with 850, and had put one man on board each as a prize-crew, and ordered them to Sitka. As in the case of the Black Diamond,' the original crew refused to obey the one man's orders, and took the ships into Victoria, Vancouver's Island, instead of Sitka. There is no nation which has more strenuously denied and resisted the right of search than the American nation, and none which has resented it more successfully. In the present case, unless the sealers were seized within three miles of the United States coast, which no one has as yet asserted, it is not conceivable how the right to interfere can be even plausibly claimed.
