ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL. 



TWENTIETH DAY, MAY lo™, 1893. 



The President. — Now we will bear the other side, and we are quite 

 ready, Sir Charles Kussell, to give yon fnll attention. 



Sir Chakles Russell. — Mr. President and Gentlemen, I do not pro- 

 pose, at this stage of the discussion, to trouble the Tribunal with any 

 comments upon the importance of the fact of this Arbitration, — the fact 

 that two great Powers have come by friendly agreement to submit to 

 arbitration the differences existing between them. Nor do I intend, at 

 this stage, to comment upon the far-reaching importance of the ques- 

 tions involved, nor upon the dignity of this Tribunal, which has taken 

 upon itself the burden of dealing with those questions. I may have, at 

 a later stage, something to say on each of these points; but 1 desire at 

 once to go straight to the discussion of the subjects with which this 

 Tribunal is charged. 



Those subjects naturally divide themselves under four heads. There 

 is, first, that group of questions which we have agreed to call questions 

 of exclusive jurisdiction and right, embraced in the five questions of 

 Article VI of the Treaty of Arbitration. That is the first division. 

 There is, next, the question of Regulations, should the occasion therefor 

 arise, contemi^lated by Article YLl of the Treaty of Arbitration. There 

 is, next, the claim for damages, which, so far as the case of the Gov- 

 ernment of the Queen is concerned, relates to the seizures unwarranta- 

 bly made, as that Government contends, and which is dealt with by 

 Article YlII of the Treaty of Arbitration. And, lastly, there is the 

 claim for damages under the 5th Article of the Modus Vivendi of 1892. 



My learned friends in their discussion have dealt in a greater or a 

 less degree with all of these questions. The Tribunal does not require 

 to be again told by me the position which the Counsel for Great Britain 

 have assumed in relation to these questions; nor to be told that, upon 

 the present occasion, I do not intend to discuss at all the question of 

 Regulations. They belong to a different category. They involve differ- 

 ent considerations; and, as it seems to us, they cannot with advantage 

 or with clearness be approached until you have first determined the 

 question whether the consideration of Regulations is to be approached 

 in view of the existence of a legal right of an exclusive character upon 

 the part of America, or in view of the fact, for which we contend, that 

 the United States have no exclusive right of any kind in fur-seals, or 

 in relation to the protection of fur-seals, or in an industry founded on 

 fur-seals; that they have in fact no legal right of that nature at 

 724 all. Therefore it is that we iiropose to reserve until a later occa- 

 sion all discussion as to the question of Regulations. 



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