254 ORAL ARGUMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. PHELPS. 



assume here. The human race is not polygamous. The number of 

 children that are ])roduce(l under ordinary circumstances is far less. 

 The time that elapses before the productive ])erio(l arises is much 

 greater. oSTow let a person reflect ibr a moment how long it is since the 

 continent of America was discovered. The Indians that then inhabited 

 it are substantially gone. A remnant alone remains in the Far West 

 that are tV.st disappearing. Now look at the (iO,00(>,OOU or 70,00(),000 of 

 l)eople on that Continent, leaving Indians out. AVhere do they come 

 from? Emigration considerably, of course. All from emigration in 

 the first place — all the descendants of emigrants. But what country 

 has lost population in that period from whence they came? One or 

 two — perhaps one, might be named; under unhappy circumstances in 

 a more recent period, its iiopulation has diminished, but not during 

 that entire period. In every country in the world that 400 years ago 

 began to contribute to the i)opulation of the Western Hemisphere its 

 own population has largely increased. 



Now suppose a herd of animals of this kind is not touched by man 

 at all. The increase would not be indefinite: it would reach a point 

 which would be called, by naturalists its maximum. The laws of nature 

 provide for those things. Ko race of animals could ever over-populate 

 the earth or reach a point where the laws by which the increase of ])op- 

 ulation regulates itself. 



The President. — Malthusianism. 



Mr. Phelps. — Yes, the natural Malthusianism. The natural opera- 

 tion of that theoiy undoubtedly; but in order for that, causes have to 

 intervene, provided by Providence, by which these animals are kept at 

 their maximum. It was enquired by the President, in the early stages 

 of this discussion, how it came to pass, if the males were not reduced 

 by artificial killing, that the females would become most numerous. 



That is a question that is for naturalists to ansAver, or for observers; 

 but I suppose the answer to be in the theory of the survival of the 

 fittest. I suppose when the number of males becomes too large in such 

 a herd of wild animals, when they are not artificially restrained as in 

 the propagation of domestic animals, there is a mutual destruction by 

 fighting, of which these islands are the consi)icuous theatre, with regard 

 to this race of animals, and it results not in the survival of all the males, 

 but only a part of them. However, that is theoretical, and I do not 

 care to pursue it. 



Now, Sir, this is the point to which all my observations have tended 

 to day, and, part of them, yesterday: are we, or are we not as a matter 

 of fact, established by the evidence in this case, drawn from many con- 

 verging and indejjendent sources, entitled to say, that the continuance 

 of pelagic sealing just as it has taken place, especially in view of the 

 increase of it, which we have shown also to be steady, and which will 

 only find its check when the destruction of the animals ceases to render 

 it profitable, results necessarily at no very distant period in the exter- 

 mination of this race of animals here as it has everywhere else. 



Now returning to what has been said by my friends on the other side 

 — that is to say, that the management on the islands has not been good, 

 and therefore that the pelagic sealer is not responsible for all the 

 decrease that has taken place in this herd. 



Before I look into the facts upon which I shall claim that to be a 

 proposition absolutely unw^arranted — that will no more bear examina- 

 tion in the liglit of the whole evidence in the case than any of the other 

 propositions that I have been able to demonstrate to be inaccurate and 

 unfounded — suppose it to be true? Suppose that in the prosecution of 



