12 ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 



ITow wliat part has pelagic sealing, in fact, played in this matter? 

 The Tribunal will not have failed to observe that all through the writ- 

 ten arguments, and all through the oral arguments, of my friends, that 

 it is hardly an exaggeration to say that this has been their tone: not 

 only, as my friend Mr. Kobinson so clearly and pointedly mentioned 

 to-day, that pelagic sealing is a moral wrong, and claimed that pelagic 

 sealing is hostes humani generis, and the rest of it, but they have 

 assumed that every seal, or almost every seal, that a pelagic sealer 

 killed was a female seal; and they have assumed almost that every 

 female seal that they killed was either a seal carrying its young (which 

 it was about to deliver), or a female seal whiph had delivered its young 

 which it was then engaged at the time of its slaughter in nurturing. 

 It is hardly an exaggeration to describe that as the argument advanced 

 by my friends. 



Now let me point out some broad considerations. I do not stop to 

 jiotice — for I have akeady in another connection referred to that — that 

 whatever else may be said against pelagic sealing it has not yet, in the 

 history of the world, been found guilty of extermination of the race of 

 fur seal in any part of the globe — that in no part of the globe where 

 fur-seals were found formerly in great numbers and where they have 

 now ceased to be, is there extinction attributable to pelagic sealing — 

 indeed it is clear that if pelagic sealing and pelagic sealing alone were 

 pursued, that there would be no need for Eegulations at all, for the 

 object of this Treaty, namely, the preservation of the fur-seal, because 

 the past history of pelagic sealing has shown that in that which is its 

 congenial element, the sea, nature has furnished the seal tribe with 

 facilities to escape capture — it has enabled them to resist the attacks 

 of man upon the high sea. 



It is no exaggeration, to use the language of the British Commis- 

 sioners rather ridiculed by my friend, Mr. Coudert when I say — and I 

 adopt the language, for I think it is true — that pelagic sealing does 

 give the seal what they call a "sporting chance" for its life, whereas, 

 killing on the Island — knocking it on the head with a club, gives it no 

 chance whatever. Therefore, we start with this, that it is not pelagic 

 sealing that renders Eegulations necessary at all for the preservation 

 of the fur-seal. The fur-seal in the past has survived and in all human 

 probability, as far as one can judge, will continue to survive and with- 

 stand the attacks of the pelagic sealer carried on as pelagic sealing 

 necessarily is carried on in the native element or the more congenial 

 element, at least, of the fur-seal. I do not stop to point out also the 

 fact that it is admittedly the historical and most ancient form of the 

 pursuit of the fur seal. I do not stop to dwell on the distinction that 

 my friends seek to draw between what they call fur sealing where the 

 comparatively untutored Indian with canoe and spear pursued the fur- 

 seal, and compare it with the introduction of what my friend, Mr. 

 Carter called the destructive agency of civilization in the shape of 

 arms of precision and in the shape of schooners and appliances better 

 adapted for success in that class of enterprise. 



Well then, if we are right that pelagic sealing is not that which 

 makes or calls for the necessity of Eegulations standing alone, what is 

 it that does call for the necessity of those Eegulations I It is the kill- 

 ing on sea plus the killing on land; and, therefore, it does become 

 important to consider what has been the relative effect of those two 

 means of pursuit at sea and on land, and which had the most dire 

 effect u])on what has been called the depletion of the fur-seals in and 

 frequenting Behring Sea? 



