Curiously, it does not seem to have attracted much attention in the American Civil War. The Chemulpo conflict also gives rise to one or two points of interest. The reception on board the Talbot, Elba, and Pascal of the survivors of the very valua ble cruiser J'aryag, and their refusal by the United States vessel in company, furnishes an example of the so-called right of asylum. It is a little difficult to understand the Unit ed States' position in complying with the Japanese demand that the fugitives should not be received on board. Possible it was dictated by remembrances of the KcarsageAlabaina affair, when the British yacht Deerhound (whose owner certainly had no South ern sympathies) picked up the survivors of the latter. Clearly, there is no fixed princi ple that on the high seas, or in neutral wat ers, a neutral may not receive and shelter fugitive belligerents. What has been open to discussion is the question whether the neutral may do so in the protesting belliger ent's waters. Thus, it was a common oc currence in American ementes, dignified with the term "revolutions," for refugees to seek shelter on foreign warships. Their reception was complained of as a breach of the condi tion on which the foreigners were admitted to the hospitality of the port. Yet the party struggles of the young republics were so frequent and were accompanied by such vin dictive proscriptions that the custom of giv ing shelter was never abandoned. A parellel case was the reception of fugitive slaves. The contest in Parliament and elsewhere is not yet forgotten, which turned on the pro priety oí affording shelter to escaped slaves in defiance of the local law. The prevalent opinion is that these historic instances of asylum were exceptions to the general rule caused by the stress of circumstances. In the present case there is the curious compli cation introduced by the anomalous position of Corea. It might be urged that the port of Chemulpo was not really a neutral one at all, but virtually Japanese. This, however, opens up the wide question of the neutrality —and, indeed the existence—of Corea as a Government. There seems no reason for
considering Corea other than neutral, and the forcible acts which the Japanese author ities appear to be doing in that country may technically be acts of war. If Corea adopts and approves these acts, no war can arise, and she preserves her neutrality, subject to Russian complaint. But she does not neces sarily and at once become the ally of Japan; and it therefore seems that the British, Ital ian and French ships were justified in receiv ing and retaining on board Russian sailors rescued in a neutral Corean port. THE interesting question of Canada's Rights in Hudson's Bay," is discussed by W. E. O'Brien, in the Canada Law Journal. He says: Hudson's Pi ay, which ranks in point of extent with the Black Sea and Baltic, differs from those great inland seas so materially that no common rule of international law is applicable to all. No precedents for our guidance can be found in the solution of the many questions which have arisen with re gard to them, nor is there, in any part of the world, a case precisely similar to ours. Our inland sea is peculiar in this—that while the shores that surround it are all in the pos session of a single power, which is not the case with either the Black Sea or the Baltic, yet the channel by which it is approached, varying in width from one hundred to sixty miles, differs entirely from the narrow pass ages to those other seas which can be con trolled by the Powers occupying them. By their original charter the Hudson's Bay Company were granted the sole right to trade and commerce in all the waters ly ing within Hudson's Straits, including of course what is known as Hudson's Bay, and that sole right, whatever the validity of the grant may be, undoubtedly passed to Canada by the purchase of the Hudson's Bay ter ritories and all pertaining thereto in the year 1869. By the treaty of 1818 between Great Britain and the United States, which defined the rights of the Americans to fish off the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, re ference was made to the exclusive right of
