On this occasion I also spoke to him seriously as to my forebodings as to the failure of the negotiations at Washington and told him I believed he was under the impression that the matter was about settled, but warned him that at the last moment either the Senate or the President, or someone, would upset everything.
I had spoken very plainly at the Canada Club not long before on the Behring’s Sea business, and some of my remarks were published in several papers. On this point I said:
We in Canada are for the British Connection. In years gone by when we thought that the British flag was insulted, though it was not a matter in which we were concerned and happened hundreds of miles from our shores, our blood was up, and we were ready to defend the old emblem. Can you wonder, then, that we in Canada have failed to understand how your powerful British ironclads could be idle in the harbours of our Pacific coasts while British subjects were being outraged in Behring’s Sea and the old British flag insulted? No, that to us has been beyond comprehension.
Before I left England my anticipations were realised, and suddenly, without any apparent reason, President Harrison broke off the negotiations just as Mr. Blaine and our representatives had come to an agreement, and he gave orders to United States vessels to proceed at once to the Behring’s Sea and capture any Canadian vessels found fishing in those waters. This was about the end of May. I sailed for home from Liverpool on the 5th June. On the Parisian I met as a fellow passenger the Rt. Hon. Staveley Hill, M.P., whom I had known before and who had taken a most active part in the House of Commons in favour of the Canadian view of the Behring’s Sea difficulty. After we had got out to sea he said to me, “I will tell you something that you must keep strictly to yourself for the present; when we reach the other side it will probably all be out,” and he went on to say that the British Government had made up their minds to fight the United States on account of President Harrison’s action. I was startled, and asked him if they were going to declare war at once. He replied, “No, not yet, but they have sent a message to the United States Government saying that if they seized another Canadian vessel it would be followed and taken from them by force from any harbour to which it would be taken.” I at once said, “That is all right; if that message is delivered in earnest, so that they will know that it is in earnest, it means peace and no further interference.”
When we arrived at Quebec, to our surprise not a word had come out, and no one seemed to have the slightest suspicion that anything had happened. Some weeks elapsed and yet nothing was said, and I was under the impression that there had been some mistake, although Mr. Staveley Hill told me he had heard it directly from a Cabinet Minister.
I saw in the newspapers that large additions were made to the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, the latter being more than doubled in strength. About two months after my return a member of the House of Representatives got up in the United States Congress and drew attention to these extensive preparations, to the increase of the garrison of Bermuda, to the work going on in the fortifications of the West Indies, and asked that the House should be furnished with copies of the despatches between the two Governments. These were brought down, and Lord Salisbury’s ultimatum appeared in the following words:
Her Britannic Majesty’s Government have learned with great concern, from notices which have appeared in the Press, and the general accuracy of which has been confirmed by Mr. Blaine’s statements to the undersigned, that the Government of the United States have issued instructions to their revenue cruisers about to be despatched to Behring’s Sea, under which vessels of British subjects will again be exposed in the prosecution of their legitimate industry on the high seas to unlawful interference at the hands of American officers.
Her Britannic Majesty’s Government are anxious to co-operate to the fullest extent of their power with the Government of the United States in such measures as may be found expedient for the protection of the seal fisheries. They are at the present moment engaged in examining, in concert with the Government of the United States, the best method of arriving at an agreement on this point. But they cannot admit the right of the United States of their own sole motion to restrict for this purpose the freedom of navigation of Behring’s Sea, which the United States have themselves in former years convincingly and successfully vindicated, nor to enforce their municipal legislation against British vessels on the high seas beyond the limits of their territorial jurisdiction.
Her Britannic Majesty’s Government is therefore unable to pass over without notice the public announcement of an intention on the part of the Government of the United States to renew the acts of interference with British vessels navigating outside the territorial waters of the United States, of which they had previously had to complain.
The undersigned is in consequence instructed formally to protest against such interference, and to declare that her Britannic Majesty’s Government must hold the Government of the United States responsible for the consequences that may ensue from acts which are contrary to the established principles of International law.