THE BRITISH LION'S PAW THRUST INTO AMERICAN POLITICS TO HELP CLEVELAND FACSIMILE OF BARON SACKVILLE'S EXTRAORDINARY ADVISING HIM THAT PRESIDENT CLEVELAND A brief paragraph, headed "The A B C of Lord Sackville's profession," quoted Secretary Bayard's Instructions of 1885 to American Diplomatic Agents forbidding them" to participate in any manner in the political concerns of the country of their residence.” The British Minister had a grievance in that his letter, marked private, was made public; and he had a still greater grievance because a deliberate fraud had been conspired and perpetrated against him. It was insulting to Great Britain that a disgraceful electioneering trick should be played against the representative of Her Majesty. But Lord Sackville had himself to blame for having allowed himself to be gulled. He should never have answered the "Murchison " letter, otherwise than by saying, as the Mexican Minister had done, that he took no part in American domestic affairs. The odd thing about the whole affair is that Lord Sackville, having made one false step,-probably the first technical diplomatic mistake he had ever made-went on obstinately and made another. Instead of apologising at once to the United States Government and owning his mistake, he did the sort of deed which practically every diplomatist who has ever done it has rued-he gave an interview to a pressman. Asked by the persuasive reporter of the New York Tribune if he had expected his letter to get into print, Lord Sackville said: "No, indeed; especially as I marked it private. But now that it is published, I don't care." This was not the only interview that he permitted. "The bell-pull at the office of the British Legation," as the New York Herald picturesquely said, had not been "so busy for many a day." Lord Sackville having made his mistakes, the Foreign Office, which certainly ought to have known better, went on to make mistakes too. When the news arrived in London on October 27, Mr. E. J. Phelps, the American Minister, was actually staying with the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Salisbury. Mr. Phelps had the news first, and after dinner, over one of Lord Salisbury's cigars, he told the Foreign Secretary what had happened. Lord Salisbury was a fine statesman and an English gentleman—his only fault, perhaps, was that he was rather easy-going as regards the details of politics. He was essentially cautious, too. So for both these reasons he received the news of the Sackville incident calmly, although quite seriously, and proceeded in his deliberate way to set the machinery of the Foreign Office in motion. Not that Lord Salisbury was at all dilatory. He went over to the Foreign Office on the very evening that the American Minister told him the news, and he wrote straight off to Lord Sackville for a copy of the Minister's "speeches." But Mr. Phelps had also conveyed a request from the State Department that Lord Sackville should be recalled. It would undoubtedly have been best if Lord Salisbury had at once acceded to this request, as soon as the facts of the Sackville incident had been confirmed from Washington (as they were by a telegram from Lord Sackville himself, received next day at the Foreign Office). Lord Salisbury, however, declined to recall the Minister, as such a course would imply "the censure of two Governments," the British and American. But something had to be done to satisfy American public opinion before the election for President took place on November 4. Accordingly, on October 31, Mr. Secretary Bayard sent Lord Sackville his passports. Lord Salisbury was very nettled at this, and refused to appoint any other Minister at Washington until President Cleveland went out of office in March of the following year. CHAPTER XXIII SEALS The decision of President Cleveland to deliver passports to Lord Sackville was probably due in equal proportions to resentment at the British Minister's indiscretion, and to a desire to prove his own independence of British interests. The Minister's letter and its publication may have influenced the voters against the Cleveland Administration. At any rate the President failed to be re-elected on this occasion; the Republican, Benjamin Harrison, took his place. Cleveland retired to Number 816, Madison Avenue, and took up again his busy life as a lawyer. Benjamin Harrison was a quiet, sensible, thorough man. His great-grandfather had signed the Declaration of Independence; his grandfather had been the "simple-life" or "hard-cider " President of the United States; his father had been a member of the House of Representatives. Benjamin himself had been simply brought up on the family farm in Ohio, and had graduated from Miami University. Thereafter he energetically practised the profession of a lawyer, except for four years' active service in the Civil War (on the Northern side). Under Harrison the commanding personality of James G. Blaine returned to the State Department. The Blaines, belonging to the set of old residents of the capital, where they had always occupied a prominent social position, had naturally many long-established relations with the diplomatic body.1 Relations with Great Britain were not particularly smooth when President Harrison took over office on March 4, 1889; not merely was there no British Minister at Washington, but there was a serious controversy between Great Britain and the United States over the Behring Sea. The first difficulty was put right by Lord Salisbury at once appointing a Minister Plenipotentiary (April 2). The new British Minister was Sir Julian Pauncefote, who started his active career as a barrister, practised at Hong-Kong, 1 Rosen, op. cit., I, 77. became Attorney-General there, and in 1874 returned to England and entered the Colonial Office. In 1876 he was transferred to the Foreign Office, and in 1880 he succeeded Lord Tenterden as Permanent Under-Secretary of State. When sent to Washington as Minister, Sir Julian's knowledge of law, as well as his experience of foreign affairs, proved of the highest value to his country. But his personality counted for as much as anything else. The opinion which the State Department formed of him was that he was “candid, fair, and an open fighter." 1 He was also in other respects the representative of the best traditions of British diplomacy: he was hospitable, friendly, and of an unruffled temper. An enormous amount of work was put upon him. All the conventions made between Great Britain and the United States during his period as Minister (or Ambassador) at Washington were negotiated and signed there, not in London. The American Minister to the Court of St. James during Harrison's administration was Robert Lincoln, the only surviving son of the great President. Mr. Robert Lincoln had served in the Civil War, had practised law at Chicago, had the distinction of being a presidential elector in 1880, and was Secretary of War under Presidents Garfield and Arthur. He held the London Mission from 1889 to 1893. 11889 The accession of the Republican Party to power brought the movement for a lower tariff to a sudden stop. The new tariff, associated with the name of William McKinley, leader of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives, was of a highly protective nature. There was no hope along tariff lines for a rapprochement with Great Britain. Tariffs, however, are really a domestic question. The Seal Dispute was more troublesome, and in the 'nineties war was not infrequently mentioned in America as a possible solution of the difficulty. It is a curious fact that on the British side of the Atlantic war was seldom or never mentioned in this period. The Foreign Office knew that the two Powers might any year be involved in hostilities, but the British public never seriously thought war to be likely. It is probable that this care-free attitude of the British public for the last thirty years is based on a sound instinct. The Seal Question undoubtedly presented great difficulties. One hundred and fifty years ago, it is said, the fur-seal, a most valuable 1 McElroy, Life of Cleveland, II, 179. animal, was also one of the most widely distributed. Indiscriminate slaughter, however, reduced the seals enormously. By the middle of the nineteenth century the chief herd was the one which had its breeding station (summer) off the Pribilov Islands in the Behring Sea. The Russian Government, which possessed both sides of the Behring Sea (Kamchatka and Alaska), and also the Aleutian Islands on the south of the sea, carefully protected the seal-fishing there. In 1821 the Tsar issued the now celebrated ukase, claiming jurisdiction to within 100 Italian marine miles of his coasts and islands, southwards to latitude 51° north. Both Great Britain and the United States refused to recognize this ukase as good in international law. In 1867 Alaska passed by purchase and treaty to the United States. Mr. Seward had for his object, in making this annexation, "to check the growing power of Great Britain in North America." 1 The seal-fishing in American waters was leased to a commercial corporation, which killed about 100,000 seals a year. In 1880 Canadian vessels, and also unauthorised vessels flying the United States flag, began to attack the seal-herd as it journeyed up the coast, from its winter quarters off California, to its summer quarters in the Behring Sea. In 1885 these vessels began to enter the Behring Sea itself. The Russian Government had pursued a policy of protecting the breeding of seals by restricting the fishing, or rather the hunting, for them, as far as possible, to land. Only male seals were to be taken. When the Canadians and others started pelagic fishing (that is, hunting with the spear or shot-gun at sea) the seal-herd greatly diminished. The United States authorities, accordingly, in 1886, had a number of unlicensed vessels in the Behring Sea seized by revenue cutters, brought in to Sitka in Alaska, and condemned. The ground of condemnation was that all the waters of the Behring Sea were within the jurisdiction of the United States, as the inheritor of an exclusive Russian jurisdiction. The British Government naturally protested against seizure of British vessels and demanded compensation. From the United States Secretary of State Bayard carried on negotiations with the Foreign Office through Minister Phelps, and had made some progress when the election of President Harrison put an end to the ministrations of both Bayard and Phelps. When Harrison came into office, the negotiations were transferred 1 John W. Foster, Diplomatic Memoirs (1909), II, 20. |