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ly upon the ground that the vessel was unlawfully seized on a spurious charge of piracy, and that the proceedings at Santiago de Cuba were conducted in flagrant disregard of law and of the treaties between the two countries. In March, 1895, the American steamer Alliança, bound from Colon to New York, was fired on by a Spanish gunboat off the coast of Cuba outside the three-mile limit. The Spanish government promptly disavowed the act and expressed regret, and, by way of assurance that such an event would not again occur, relieved the offending officer of his command. Incidents such as these served to show that the principle of the freedom of the seas has lost neither its vitality nor its importance. It may indeed be said that the exemption of vessels from visitation and search on the high seas in time of peace is a principle which rather grows than diminishes in the estimation of mankind; for in the light of history its establishment is seen to mark the progress of commerce from a semibarbarous condition, in which it was exposed to constant violence, to its present state of freedom and security. Nor is there any page in American diplomacy more glorious than that on which the successful advocacy of this great principle is recorded.

William Bainbridge
From a painting by Gilbert Stuart

As the freedom of the open seas advanced, inordinate claims of dominion over adjacent waters naturally shrank and dwindled away. By the treaty of peace with the United States of 1782-3 Great Britain limited her exclusive claims to the fisheries on the northeastern coasts of America to three marine miles from the "coasts, creeks, bays, and harbors"; and this limitation was retained in the convention of 1818. When the Emperor of Russia, by his ukase of September 27, 1821, assumed to prohibit navigation and fishing within a hundred Italian miles of the northwest coast of America, both Great Britain and the United States protested, and the claim was abandoned. It is generally supposed, and the supposition apparently is shared by the Supreme Court, that Mr. Blaine, in his correspondence concerning the fur-seals, claimed that the United States had derived from Russia exclusive dominion over Bering Sea. It is, however, a fact that in a note to Sir Julian Pauncefote, December 17, 1800, Mr. Blaine said, "The government has never claimed it and never desired it; it expressly disavows it." Whether this sweeping denial is or is not entirely justified by the record is a question that need not he here considered. By the treaty of February 29, 1892, and the award rendered thereunder, all exceptional jurisdictional claims with regard to Bering Sea disappeared, and the protection of the fur-seals has since rested exclusively on the basis,