FORTY-THIRD DAY, JUNE 22^", 1893. 



Mr. Phelps. — I congratulate the Tribiiual, Mr. President, on its 

 approacli to the end of this debate; I cannot express my regret that 

 my duty compels me at this late day to continue it. It has had much 

 to commend it to your attention ; it has presented most important and 

 interesting questions; it has been dignified by the occasion and the 

 circumstances that have attended it; it has been adorned as well as 

 elucidated by the distinguished advocates who have preceded me; but 

 it is impossible not to feel now, that it has been prolonged beyond all 

 our anticipations, and that the whole subject has become a weariness. 

 The inexhaustible patience, the more than kindly courtesy which you. 

 Sir, and your eminent associates have accorded to us, have been men- 

 tioned in appropriate terms by my learned friends on the other side. 

 It is not for them, it is not for us, to thank you; the ackuowledgment 

 should come, and will come, no doubt, in due time, from the great 

 Nations at whose invitation and for whose benefit you have under- 

 taken this onerous task. To that patience and kindness I have still to 

 appeal, most reluctantly, and perhaps at some length. It would be a 

 very undeserved compliment to the able arguments we have listened 

 to diuing these twenty-eight days from my learned friends on the other 

 side, to assume that they could be brushed hastily aside. 



The discussion, Sir, has taken a wide range. I do not complain of 

 it; I have no right to complain of it. It is not for me to assume to set 

 bounds to the limits of this subject, or to prescribe the considerations 

 npou which it has to be determined. That is a matter entirely for the 

 better and less partial judgment of the Tribunal. It is for me, how- 

 ever, and it will be my endeavour, to recall the discussion to the real 

 questions we conceive to be involved, and to the real grounds uj)on 

 which, as we believe, their determination must proceed. 



Now, Sir, what are the questions proposed by the Treaty for decision? 

 They are chiefly two, the one the alternative of the other. The first is, 

 (and in one view of the case it is the only question), whether the Cana- 

 dian sealers and the renegade Americans who seek the protection of 

 the British flag in order to defy with impunity the laws of their coun- 

 try, have a right to which the United States must submit, to continue 

 the destruction in which they have been engaged. 



Several other questions are in form propounded by the Treaty. They 

 are but incidental and subsidiary to this. They cannot be made other- 

 wise than secondary, because in their very nature they are so. They 

 are only important so far as the answer to them throws light (if it does 

 throw light) upon the only question ever in dispute between the two 

 countries on that subject — does the right exist in these individuals to 

 contijiue the business they have been engaged in*? When you have 

 decided that, you have decided all that is in dispute. Until you have 

 decided that you have decided nothing. It is useless to explore the 

 dead bones of the dijilomacy of seventy five years ago, to try and ex- 

 tract a meaning from language which i)erhaps was employed to conceal 



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