ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 7 



entitled to exercise those rights of war in time of peace and against a 

 friendly power, although there has been no diplomatic expostulation or 

 warning. 



The next proposition is that the moral law and the law of nature are 

 international law — that the terms are interchangeable; and, therefore, 

 because the United States chooses to come to the conclusion that i^elagic 

 sealing is a crime — a grave moral wrong, and an indefeuvsible act — 

 therefore my friends come to the conclusion that it is to be classed with 

 I)iracy ; and that the sanctions which international law applies to piracy 

 may be applied to the pelagic sealer. 



Again, it is asserted that even if seals are (it is not admitted that 

 they are) animals ferw nafurcv, yet the property in them is in the United 

 States, because they breed upon the islands, and have the animus rever- 

 tendi to them. 



Now here I must x>fiuse to point the two respects in which this last 

 proposition displays, as it seems to us, a remarkable confusion of ideas. 

 It coufouniis two rights perfectly clear and perfectly distinct. 



One is the right in respect of animals fercv naturce which the owner 

 of the soil has, ratione soli, to kill those animals when they are 

 728 on his soil, sometimes called (I think, inajotly called) a qualified 

 right of property: a right, in other words, which, by giving to 

 the owner of the soil the right to exclude all others from access to it, 

 secures to him the exclusive right, while the animals ferw natnrce are 

 on the soil, of killing them. That is a distinct, clear, legal conception; 

 a right recognized by the law as incident to property; and it is properly 

 called the right ratione soli. But that does not touch or affect the 

 question of property in those animals when they are not on the soil of 

 the owner. 



If they be domestic animals, or if they be animals which by the 

 industry, care, and art of man have become assimilated to domestic 

 animals, then a property may exist in them ; and tlie right to possession 

 follows that property even when they are off the land and out of the 

 physical control of the owner. But the right ratione soli, which is 

 exclusive of everybody else, and which is exercisable only on the soil 

 of the owner, does not give the property in animals ferce naturm when 

 they are on the laud — much less when off the soil of the owner. 



Again, a further confusion. Animus revertendi is referred to as if 

 the mere fact of animus revertendi gave property ; and in the argument 

 of my learned friend, greatly to my surprise, he did not attempt 

 to draw any distinction (indeed he said there was none), between 

 the animus revertendi which was i)art, so to speak, of the nature of 

 the animal, and the animus revertendi which alone has anything to 

 do with the question of property, namely the animus revertendi which 

 is induced by the art, the care, the industry of man. The two tilings 

 are distinct. If animus revertendi gives property in animals ferce 

 naturw, then the law of every civilized country would have given 

 property in pheasants, in rabbits, in hares, in almost every class of 

 animal which is recognized as coming under the head of game; yet it 

 is notorious that the law of every civilized country recognizes that there 

 is merely the exclusive right to take the game when it is upon the land 

 of the owner; and that when the game is off" the land, although it has 

 the animus revertendi, yet the law does not recognize the right of prop- 

 erty on account of that animus revertendi, although in that case it is to 

 some extent produced by the art and care of man himself. 



The next proposition of my friend is this: Individual ownership 

 ought to exist in all things susceptible of ownership, and ought to be 



