42 ORAL ARGUMENT OF SON. EDWARD J. PHELPS. 



absolutely bound to observe it. This law contains the precepts prescribed by the 

 law of nature to states on whom that law is not less obligatory than on individuals. 

 Since States are composed of men, their resolutions are taken by men as the law of 

 nature. It is biudinji: on all men under whatever relations they act. This is the 

 law which Grotius and those who foUow him (^all the internal law of nations, on 

 account of its being obligatory on nations in point of conscience. 



Mr. Phelps. — Without referiing- to any other autliorities of whicli 

 nuiuy are to be foniid in the i)iinte(l argument already submitted, I 

 leave it Avith tins citation, which seems to me instructive. It is from 

 the French Code, article 4 of the Civil code. 



A .judge who under the pretence that a law is silent, obscure or insufficient refuses 

 to decide a case may be prosecuted as being guilty of a denial of justice. 



It is a wise provision. It answers. Sir, the question you were good 

 enough to put to me yesterday, whether what I have asserted in respect 

 of international law is not equally true of municipal law; that so long- 

 as you are within the domain of municipal law, dealing, for instance, 

 with the question of property — so long as you are asking for that sort 

 of relief the law is accustomed to give, it is enough for yon to show 

 that justice requires it, until you are encountered by either a statute 

 or a i^rinciple of law that has been settled to the contrary. In other 

 words, to put the proposition in another form, the only way in a Court 

 of Justice, even in muidcipal law, to answer the man who demands a 

 right that is within the province of law, and satisties the Court that it 

 is just, is to show that the law has been settled otherwise, upon some 

 ground that restrains the hand of the Court from doing what it other- 

 wise would. 



Now I come back to this case. I hope the time has not been quite 

 wasted in considering this principle, though, as will be apparent from 

 what I have to say, it may not be necessary to invoke it. We return to 

 the subject of the right of these people to i)rosecute the business that it 

 called pelagic sealing. Of course, if they have not the right to do it, 

 the United States have a right to protect themselves from it. Then 

 arises the question which my learned friends, with the ingenuity that 

 comes to able advocates with long experience, have sought to dispose 

 of by analysis. ''What does the right of the United States stand on?" 

 They are entitled to an answer to that question. We are here on our 

 own territory, dealing with a race of animals that is appurtenant to it; 

 begotten there, born there, reared there, living there seven months in 

 the year, protected from the extermination that has overtaken their 

 species in every other spot on the globe, where they ever inhabited, 

 and which would speedily overtake them here if we were to relax the 

 reins of Government. One year after the United States took possession, 

 that is to say after they acquired title and before the necessary legisla- 

 tion could be had and arrangements made to police these Islands, an 

 enormous number of seals, some 260,000 were destroyed on the Islands 

 by poachers. That fate would overtake them all immediately, if not 

 protected. 



We have built up a valuable industry; we have introduced upon 

 those Islands a civilization, an account of which yon will find in the 

 American Case, illustrated by some coini)arative ])hotographs showing 

 the manner in which the natives used to live and the manner in which 

 they live now, — the Schools, the Churches, the cleanliness, the order, 

 the Christianity that has superseded the old barbarism; and some of 

 them, as I am reminded, have property and de])osits in r>anks. That 

 is what has been brought about for them, the United States deriving a 

 large revenue, the world getting the benefit of this product, all which 



