THIRTY-SEVENTH DAY, JUNE 13™, 1893. 



Sir Charles Russell. — Mr. President, I have up to tliis point, upon 

 the question of Regulations, dealt with what I conceive to be, and 

 what we respectfully submit ought to be, the general questions which 

 ought to enter into that question ; and, in order wholly or in part to 

 remove prejudice, and in order also that the Tribunal should have a 

 just appreciation of what the actual facts were, I endeavoured to show 

 in some detail, and I hope I succeeded in showing, that, upon no view 

 of the actual facts of the case, could it be established that pelagic seal- 

 ing had been the main or even the principal cause of the depletion of 

 the seal race which, it is admitted, has to some extent taken i)lace; and 

 though I have always admitted that pelagic sealing was a contributory 

 cause, I showed also, or endeavoured to show that the true cause, the 

 main and j^rincipal cause, was the pernicious system pursued upon the 

 Islands: a system condemned by the voice of the strongest authorities 

 representing the interests of the United States themselves; the great 

 and main fact being, that instead of observing the moderation that had 

 been j)ursued during the Russian regime^ — that instead of observing 

 periods of rest as the Russian Government did during that regime, the 

 United States, beginning by permitting that extraordiiuiry wholesale 

 slaughter in the year 1868 of nearly a quarter of a million of seals, had 

 permitted their lessees to take year by year the full quota of about 

 100,000 a year, unmindful of the fact that they were saj)ping the future 

 male stock of that herd upon which, to a great extent at least, its future 

 health and prosperity depended. The general considerations, which I 

 have submitted should be borne in mind by the tribunal were, that the 

 Regulations should be just and equitable in view of the common inter- 

 est to be affected by them: that they ought to be snch that the con- 

 currence of other Powers might be exi^ected in observing them, that it 

 was a question of the regulation of rights upon the high seas, not a ques- 

 tion of the proMbition or annihUation of those rights : and that the great 

 object, of the Regulations is the preservation of the fur-seal species, 

 and not the aggrandisement of the United States, or the putting them 

 in a position in wliich they could reap a larger profit from the killing 

 of the seals. 



• I submitted also that while you had no power to make direct Regula- 

 tions upon the Islands, yet that you have the j^ower, and I submit 

 ought to exercise the power, of making your Regulations conditional 

 upon the observance of certaitt distinct rules upon the Islands, the main 

 one of which would be moderation as to the number killed, as to which 

 the Russian example to which I referred, would seem to afford a safe 

 and convenient guide; and lastly, as to general considerations, I sub- 

 mitted that in view of the incompleteness of the information which is 

 even now possessed in relation to the conditions which affect seal life, 

 your Regulations ought either to be for a definite period of time only, 

 or if on the face of them they purjiorted to have a longer existence or 

 application, that there ought to be power, after the lapse of a reason- 

 able time for either Power to denounce those Regulations and recede 



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