nam and Mr James B. Angell acted for the United
States. The commission succeeded in agreeing to the terms of a treaty,
which was recommended to Congress by President Cleveland as supplying "a
satisfactory, practical and final adjustment, upon a basis honourable
and just to both parties, of the difficult and vexed questions to which
it relates." This agreement, known as the Chamberlain-Bayard treaty, was
rejected by the Senate, and as a consequence it became necessary to
carry on the fisheries under a _modus vivendi_ renewed annually.

In 1886 a difference about international rights on the high seas arose
on the Pacific coast in connexion with the seal fisheries of Bering Sea.
In that year several schooners, fitted out in British Columbia for the
capture of seals in the North Pacific, were seized by a United States
cutter at a distance of 60 m. from the nearest land, the officers were
imprisoned and fined, and the vessels themselves subjected to
forfeiture. The British government at once protested against this
infraction of international right, and through long and troublesome
negotiations firmly upheld Canada's claims in the matter. The dispute
was finally referred to a court of arbitration, on which Sir John
Thompson, premier of the Dominion, sat as one of the British
arbitrators. It was decided that the United States had no jurisdiction
in the Bering Sea beyond the three miles' limit, but the court also made
regulations to prevent the wholesale slaughter of fur-bearing seals. The
sum of $463,454 was finally awarded as compensation to the Canadian
sealers who had been unlawfully seized and punished. This sum was paid
by the United States in 1898.

As the result of communications during 1897 between Sir Wilfrid Laurier
and Secretary Sherman, the governments of Great Britain and the United
States agreed to the appointment of a joint high commission, with a view
of settling all outstanding differences between the United States and
Canada. The commission, which included three members of the Canadian
cabinet and a representative of Newfoundland, and of which Lord
Herschell was appointed chairman, met at Quebec on the 23rd of August
1898. The sessions continued in Quebec at intervals until the 10th of
October, when the commission adjourned to meet in Washington on the 1st
of November, where the discussions were renewed for some weeks. Mr
Nelson Dingley, an American member of the commission, died during the
month of January,