ORAL ARGUMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. TIIELPS. 117 



by Russia decided. It is stated that the majority of the Committee 

 thought they shouhl be paid. I should have been with the majority, 

 and wliy? Peh^gic sealing never had been practised, as you see, prior 

 to 1892. On these Islands no statute existed on the subject which 

 would be notice to the world. No regulations had been promulgated. 

 No notice had been given. These vessels came across in the pursuit of 

 the business of pelagic sealing which they had been accustomed to 

 conduct with impunity on the other side, without any notice or warn- 

 ing or statute, and without crossing the territorial limits; these two 

 vessels that are paid for did not by themselves or their boats cross the 

 territorial line of tliree miles. That was not all. When they were 

 captured by the Eussiau vessels, it does not appear that they were 

 engaged in pelagic sealing — they had been, but it nowhere appears that 

 they were caught flagrante delicto. But on examination it was found 

 by the contents of the vessels that they had been so engaged. 1 make 

 no account of the earlier correspondence given in the United States 

 Counter Case — the earlier claims on the part of the sealing captains 

 that were captured of ill treatment by the Eussiau oiticials, and the 

 confiscation of their personal property and the indignity that had been 

 put upon them. It is published in the Victoria News, reading from page 

 201 of the Counter Case Appendix, the head lines being: 



Russian Piracy.— Sealers taken in the open sea. — Three Victoria craft 



SEIZED AND THEIR CREWS TURP:ATENED WITH SIBERIA. — A FrISCO VICTIM ALSO. 



Startliug story of outrage, insult and pillage. — The captured crews turned heart- 

 lessly adrift. 



That proves nothing. I take no account of that, because the cor- 

 respondence and the Report of the Committee, as far as it appears, does 

 not justify it. How much that entered into the case or how little I do 

 not know. The Eeport of the Committee is not here; the evidence is 

 not here; nothing is here except the result. The results of the Eeport 

 are stated in the letter of Mr. Chichkine to which I will allude in a 

 moment, in No. 3. General Foster reminds me that they had the affi- 

 davit in the Counter Case Appendix as to the locality where these 

 vessels were seized far out at sea, 30 or 40 miles. Now, even divesting 

 it of all these charges of special injury and unauthorized conduct, of 

 M'hich we do not know whether they entered into the account or not, I 

 say upon the grounds that do appear, and this will become more clear, 

 I am sure, in what I shall have occasion to say hereafter, the payment 

 for the vessels was right. 



Such regulations must first be necessary. Without that postulate, 

 you do not advance a step towards justitication. No nation can stretch 

 out its hand on the high sea, at its own caprice, for its own convenience, 

 and lay hands upon the vessel of another nation sailing under its own 

 flag. Before that can be done, the measure nuist be shown to be nec- 

 essary; just as self-defence by an individual, which may go to the extent 

 perhaps of taking the life of the assailant in the public highway where 

 the assailant has a right to be, nuist be shown to be necessary, and the 

 man who assumes to assert it takes the risk of being able to sliow^ it. 

 In the next place, when it is necessary, the means by which it is enforced 

 must be reasonable. These vessels, as I have said, are seized without 

 warning, either actual or constructive, engaged in a business which 

 their Government asserts they have a right to engage in ; engaged in a 

 business which they have practised with impunity elsewhere, and the 

 loss falls upon them, not upon the Government to which they belong. 



