4 ORAL ARGUMENT OP HON. EDWARD J. PHELPS. 



meaning, unless by so doing, assistance can be obtained in deciding 

 this ])riucipal question. 



What then is the business these men have been engaged in? It is so 

 long since this case was stated, that perhaps I may be excused for briefly 

 restating it. Tlie Ishmds have been in possession of Enssia, down to 

 the time when they were ceded to the United States, ever since their 

 discovery. They were discovered and first occupied by Eussia, and her 

 title has never been questioned, and is not questioned now. Nearly 

 one hundred years ago that country established upon the Islands an 

 industry, a husbandry, in the protection and management of the seals 

 which resorted there in almost countless numbers. Whatever else took 

 place between Enssia aiul other countries, that industry remained unim- 

 paired, undisturbed. No man, no nation, ever claimed in any instance 

 which the preparation of the case on either side has disclosed, the 

 right to go there, to touch one of these animals, or to interfere in any 

 way whatever witli the industry that Eussia was carrying on. In 1807 

 the province of Alaska, including those Islands, was transferred to the 

 United States for a large consideration, between seven and eight million 

 dollars, and, as I shall have occasion to show later in the case, the exist- 

 ence of that industry, which was all that gave the province any present 

 or immediately future value, was the chief inducement to the purchase. 

 After that, considerably later, not to any serious or appreciable extent 

 till 1884 perhaps, they began from Canada to destroy these seals; and 

 in what way? What is it they have since been doing, and which they 

 claim the right to continue to do? It is the extermination of the race. 

 If we have not proved that, we have not i:>roved anything. 



I shall not take leave of you, Sir, if that question can be said to be 

 still in doubt, without demonstrating from the evidence the absolute 

 correctness, the absence of all exaggeration in the statement I have 

 made. It is a matter of evidence, printed and lying before you, out of 

 which any intelligent man who will give time enough and trouble 

 enough, can make it perfectly a])parent that the process that is being 

 carried on is the extermination of the race of seals. How "? By destroy- 

 ing on their annual passage to the Islands the females pregnant with 

 young, just about to be delivered, in large numbers, 80 or 85 per cent 

 of the whole catch being of that sort, and the destruction, after their 

 young have been born, of the mothers who are nursing them, and who 

 go out to sea for sustenance, and if destroyed, leave their young to 

 starve on the islands. 



That is the method of the destruction. That is the result which is 

 claimed here as a right — as a part of the freedom of the sea to which a 

 great nation must submit, not at the hands or for the benefit of another 

 nation or even a i)roviuce, but for a little knot of adventurers of one sort 

 and another who find their temporary and miserable profit in that sort of 

 business. Coming as they do from both nations, it is only just to say that 

 we cannot charge all of this upon Canada, except so far as the flag of 

 Great Britain enables Americans to join with the Canadians in this 

 employment. It is the right to do that thing, in that way, with those 

 consequences, that is in question in this case, and which is asserted on 

 the part of Great Britain on this hearing — never before — and denied on 

 the part of the United States. 



Now, Sir, how has that question been met by my learned friends? 

 It has not been met. All the resources of the most accomplished advo- 

 cacy have been exhausted in escaping from it — in avoiding it — in 

 circumventing it— in approaching it from every direction except the 

 straight forward one. My learned friends have felt as any man must 



