156 ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M. P. 



ou notice by General Foster, and it will save the Tribunal a little trouble 

 if I tell tbein at present that my references are negative to show tliat 

 tliey make no reference to this matter. I shall have to refer to these 

 Reports later on in another connection. Mr. Golf made his report to 

 Mr. Wiudom on the 31st of July, 1889 ; and there is not the slightest 

 reference to any abnormal death of pups. Tiiere is a reference to the 

 cause of decrease which I must not be tempted to read now; otherwise, 

 1 shall be open to the complaint of reading the same thing twice. In 

 1890 (the reference will be found in the 3rd Volume of the Appendix to 

 the British Case, third part, page 15), Captain Goff again makes a 

 Report, and I call attention to what Cai)taiu Goff knew with regard to 

 what was going on. 

 He writes ou tlie 31st July, 1890, 



Professor H. W. Elliot your recent appointee as Treasury Agent, has spent the 

 season here, dividing his time between the two islands, and giving his entire atten- 

 tion to the state of the rookeries and the methods used at present in driving and 

 killing the seals, and his report will, no doubt, be of the utmost importance, and of 

 great value to the department. 



Mr. William Palmer, a representative of the Smithsonian Institution, has, by your 

 permission, spent the season on St. Paul collecting specimens of various birds and 

 animals, and his incessant labours have been abundantly rewarded. 



I know it is tlie line of the United States to belittle the experience 

 and observations of these men. Tliat is their attitude to-day; but I at 

 present call attention to the fact tliat there was a careful examination 

 Ijeing made, with the knowledge of these Treasury Agents, in 1890, by 

 independent gentlemen, and had it been true that upon tlie: e very 

 rookeries tliere was, as the later affidavits say, evidence of an abnormal 

 quantity of dead pups, it must have been observed. 



I will not read any further passages from that. Mr. Murray the 

 Treasury Agent from 1889 to 1892 made a Report in 1890. It will be 

 found at page 18 of that same third part of vol. 3 of the Appendix, and 

 Nettleton's will be found at page 48, and Lavender's at page 52, and not 

 one of these gentlemen makes any suggestion of any dead pups there 

 in 1890. But what is more remarkable — and I trust the Tribunal will 

 follow this is, three of these gentlemen make affidavits for the United 

 States as well — Mr. Goff, Mr. Murray and Mr. ISTettleton, and two or three 

 — I think three, but certainly two — have made affidavits which, if it 

 had been the fact that these pups were observed dead in 1889 and 1S90, 

 it must have come to their knowledge, and their affidavits are absolutely 

 silent with regard to the matter Mr. Lavender the fourth agent had 

 been active in getting affidavits for the United States, but makes none 

 himself in support of this. It does not stop there. There are three 

 Company's agents on the Island, and I need not tell you that the Com- 

 panys interest would be to tell any fact that showed that their industry 

 had been interfered with by ])elagic sealing. It is the interest of the 

 Company to bring those facts before the United States. The first of 

 the affidavits is Mr. Fowler's, who has been on the Islands since 1879. 

 It will be found at pages 25 and 26 of Appendix to the United States 

 Case. He refers to the death of the pups in 1891, and does not suggest 

 that it ever occurred before that year. 



Now tliere is the Agent on the Island of the Company referring to 

 the fact in 1891 as supporting their case and making no reference to 

 what is now suggested by other peojde who had not anything like his 

 experience — that something of the, same kind had been going on from 

 1884 to 1881, and they now use it to show that pelagic sealing was the 

 cause. Eedpath, a witness not unfrequently referred to both in the 



