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



I was proceeding, Mr. President to say that I have now got to a point 

 at which I am entitled to ask the Tribunal to say that pelagic sealing 

 is not — is shewn not to have been — the main canse of the injury which 

 the Commissioners both of the United States and Great Britain agree 

 has taken place in relation to seal life. The main causes are to be found 

 in the facts stated to which I have already briefly adverted, in that 

 Eeport of Mr. Elliott; and now I think that these circumstances ought 

 to have, as 1 am sure they will have, a very important influence on the 

 mind of the Tribunal in considering the Regulations which have, in 

 justice, in fairness, aad in equity, to be applied in the circumstances 

 which I have mentioned. I took the op])ortunity earlier, of saying that 

 the Treaty does not contemplate Regulations for the aggrandisement 

 either of the United States or of the lessees of the United States — that 

 is not the object of the Treaty. The object of the Treaty is declared 

 to be the preservation of the fur seal species. That is the object to 

 which the Regulations are to be addressed. To be preserved for whom ? 

 Here, Mr. President, I cannot but feel that the view which we urged on 

 this Tribunal at a very early part of this inquiry was one which, if the 

 Tribunal had seen its way to act upon it, would at all events have sim- 

 plified the discussion upon which we are now engaged. We thought, 

 and think, that the question of Regulations was not to be broached or 

 considered until the questions of right had been determined, and is 

 there anyone who has heard the course of this case and who having 

 heard this case — heard the proposition which my friend Mr. Foster, as 

 Agent of the United States, put forward on the subject of regulations, 

 who believes that if this question of right had been determined, as we 

 submit it must be determined — could any such suggestion as is to be 

 found in the precious paper read yesterday for one moment have been 

 put forward? We submit that thei'e is not a shred of a case left to the 

 United States on the questions of right at all. I am arguing. Sir, as you 

 know, upon the principle— upon the basis — that we have negatived, 

 and that your determination will negative the existence of any legal 

 right in the United States except the legal rights which they possess, 

 ratioyiesoU — as owners of the islands, and owners of the islands alone. 



l^ow I wish to say a word or two (before I come a little more closely 

 to the question of Regulations) about the British Commissioners Report. 

 I adverted to this subject before. I do not intend to make any length- 

 ened reference to it now, but I will say this: that when my friend Mr. 

 Carter tliought it right to make an attack upon these Commissioners 

 and to make an attack even, in one or two passages, upon their good 

 faith, I think he had not read the mandate under which they were 

 acting, and I even doubt whether he had had leisure thoroughly to 

 master their Report itself. If he had read their mandate he would 

 have seen that they were called upon by that mandate to inquire into 

 any fact or circumstance touching seal life : that by their instruction 

 of June 1891 they were directed to ascertain : 



1. The actual facts as regards the alleged serious diminution of seal life on the 

 Pribilof Islands, the date at which such diminution began, the rate of its progress, 

 and any previous instance of a similar occurrence. 



2. The causes of such diminution ; whether, and to what extent, it is attributable. 

 {a.) To a migration of tlie seals to other rookeries. 



{!).) To the method of killing pur-sued on the islands themselves, 

 (c.) To the increase of sealing upon the high seas, and the manner in which it is 

 pursued. 



And, finally, in January of 1892 they are enjoined to consider in their 

 Report what Regulations may seem advisable, whether witltin the juris- 

 dictional limits of the United States and Canada, or outside those limits. 



