366 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



was necessary to establish regulations for the purpose of protecting and preserving 

 the fur-seal, it was to frame such regulations as would be applicable outside of the 

 jurisdiction of the respective governments and to indicate the non-territorial waters 

 over which these regulations should extend. As it is not important in this connection 

 to consider the jurisdictional phases of the case there will be taken up at once the 

 property question and the regulations — the two points that immediately concern us; 

 the former from the standpoint of general interest, and the latter by reason of their 

 intimate relation to the future of the seals. 



The American position. — The able representatives of the United States took the 

 position that the tribunal was bound by no precedents, and possessed, by virtue of 

 its very origin, a creative as well as a judicial function. They urged upon the tribunal 

 the taking of high ground and the settlement of the question upon broad and compre- 

 hensive principles. They pointed out that man, by means of invention, was rapidly 

 extending his dominion over the water, as he had over the land, and, by employing 

 methods which were not even dreamed of when many existing municipal and interna- 

 tional laws were enacted, threatened the very existence of many creatures useful to man. 

 Turning from the citations of voluminous authorities vindicating the justness of their 

 claim of property right in the seals and in the industry, they pleaded with sturdy 

 argument and great eloquence that the tribunal would fail of its high duty did it 

 not lend its aid to such an extension of the world's idea of property right as was needed 

 to meet the demands of the advancing age. They asked that the narrow ground 

 be not taken that this great tribunal was called into existence solely for the pur- 

 pose of settling a dispute between two nations, but that it was given an opportunity, 

 and was vested with the power, to make a substantial contribution to international 

 law, and that its verdict, while disposing of the immediate matter in dispute, should 

 be such a formulation, upon broader lines, of our conception of rights of property and 

 of protection as would be of value to all mankind, irrespective of nations. They 

 pointed out that the material progress of the world was based upon the fundamental 

 principle of ownership, and that the most effective way of preventing the commercial 

 annihilation of certain great groups of creatures was by lodging in the nation best 

 qualified by its geographic position to protect them a custodianship, to be exercised over 

 them for the benefit of all. It was shown that the adoption of this principle would 

 dispose of the question of the relation of other governments to the subject; would 

 make possible the rehabilitation of many of the seal rookeries of the south; that it 

 would protect such industries as the coral and pearl fisheries, and that it would be 

 useful in controlling the rapid inroads man's ingenuity is now making on the denizens 

 of the sea. In short, that it would be a direct, useful, and common-sense way of set- 

 tling the whole matter. 



The British position. — With equal skill of argument and eloquence of address the 

 advocates of Great Britain and Canada held that the tribunal possessed but one 

 function — that its duty was to declare the law and not to make it; but that, Avhatever 

 its function might be as an international body, it was not vested with the power to 

 make international law, but must keep to the straight and narrow way of settling a 

 contention between two nations and adjusting two contlicting methods of catching 

 seals. They asked that the tribunal provide for the continuation of pelagic sealing 

 under the most favorable conditions consistent with carrying out the terms of the 

 treaty. True, nothing was said in the treaty about preserving the business of pelagic 



