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



aflBrraed to be in that Power which cau best turn those tilings to acconnt 

 for the use of mankind. Therefore, says luy learned friend, as the 

 United States are the owners of the Pribilof Islands, and as they can 

 kill the seals upon the Pribilof Islands with more or less discrimination, 

 they are the owners of the fur-seals. 



Next: No one is entitled to more than the usufruct of property; 

 therefore, pelagic sealing on the high sea, which may be, or is, wasteful 

 of the stock, is an offence against international law. 



And, lastly : although neither the municipal law of the United States, 

 nor the municipal law of Great Britain (and I will add, nor the 

 729 municipal law of any civilized country) would recognize property 

 in the seals as between individuals — supposing this were a case 

 of private assertion of right, and the Pribilof Islands belonged to a 

 private person, — yet international law can be invoked, says my learned 

 friend, to declare the property in the United States. 



Now, Mr. President, I have to say most gravely and seriously that 

 there is no one of the propositions essential to the case of my learned 

 friend which he has propounded with which we can agree. It will be 

 found, as I proceed to examine these propositions, that some of them 

 are propositions in which the right conclusion is drawn from erroneous 

 premises; some of them in which the wrong conclusion is drawn from 

 correct premises; and, to vary the monotony, some in which both 

 premises and conclusion are wrong. 



Having mentioned these matters, in which I have expressed, as I am 

 bound to do thus early in the controversy, my disagreement with my 

 learned friends, I am glad to turn to some points as to which I find 

 myself in agreement with them. I agree with Mr. Carter as to the 

 division of the questions submitted to this Tribunal. I agree with him 

 that the first five questions — those in Article VI — are questions of 

 legal right. And I agree with him that, as regards those questions, 

 they are referred to you as judges and jurists. But what does that 

 imj)ort ? It imports that your duty is not to make the law, but to declare 

 the law : not to speculate what the law ought to be, but to say what 

 the law is: not to formulate or try to formulate novel rights, but to 

 adjudge what are existing rights. 



Before I proceed to state the order of my argument, I 

 stltes^'as to^'nt^ have some other topics to refer to. I think at the very 

 ture of luterna- threshold of this enquiry, as my friend has invoked inter- 

 aw. national law and has gone the length of saying that 



international law gives him warrant for his claim of property in the 

 fur-seals, and as he has put forward the extraordinary proposition tliat 

 the moral law and the law of nature — what the law of nature in this 

 connexion means I do not know — are two terms interchangeable with 

 international law, — I think it is desirable that I should at the outset, 

 (though I shall have to recur to it) and for the better understanding of 

 my argument, state broadly to you at this stage what our conception 

 of international law is. 



It may be admitted that all systems of law prevailing, I care not in 

 what country, profess to be founded upon principles of morality, and 

 upon principles of justice. Does it follow from that that every princi- 

 ple of justice, as one nation or another may view it, or every j)rinciple 

 of morality, as one nation or another may view it, forms part of inter- 

 national laAv? By no'means. International law, properly so called, is 

 only so much of the principles of morality and justice as the nations 

 have agreed shall be part of those rules of conduct which shall govern 



