LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE HERRING SEA TREATY.
[To THZ EDITOR 01 THZ " BPECTATOR.1
Bin,—TO my mind the United States have done a very foolish thing in not accepting the fair and reasonable offer of England to take a lump-sum for damages in the Behring Sea matter. If, however, you will have the goodness to look at the Reliving Sea Treaty, you must, I think, admit that your charge of bad faith is without foundation, for by Act viii. of the submission, it is expressly provided that no award shall conclude the question of damages. In 1827-31 we sub- mitted a boundary dispute with England to arbitration, and refused to perform an award of the King of the Nether- lands which was not warranted by the submission. It has been the irritating custom of English writers to accuse us of bad faith in that matter. If you begin now to accuse us of bad faith in this, the cause of international arbitration will indeed suffer; not from our refusal to abide by awards—we do abide by them—but from the results of such irritation as care- less accusations of bad faith must produce. Perhaps your mistake arises from the conception that what you call our 4.
Government" can bind our House of Representatives to appropriate money. That is impossible; and the English Foreign Office either knows that it is, or is unpardonably ignorant. Whichever your mistake, we were entitled to a careful inquiry into the facts, such as gentlemen make before they talk of bad faith. Such an inquiry would have shown that we had foolishly refused a good offer. But we have not
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