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



A complaint has been made, Mr. President, which I must notice in 

 passing, by my learned friend Mr. Carter, and referred to also by my 

 friend INIr. Coudert, wliich took this form: that if Canada 

 critici-ni of Cana- had not intervened this arbitration need never have been 

 diau position held— ill othcr words thnt the United States and the 

 Government of the Queen would have come to terms in the matter. Is 

 it quite right that that theme should be introduced at all? Who liave 

 a better right to speak in this matter than those who are directly inter- 

 ested? Who? 



To the United States, with its boundless resources, this is a very 

 small matter; to Canada, comparatively poor, a struggling but a rising 

 colony, it is a matter of considerable importance; and surely, as the 

 voice of Canada cannot be heard di])lomatically as between her and the 

 United States, it- was not only the right but the duty of those who rep- 

 resented her to put forward their views, and to put forward their views 

 as strongly as they could, as to the nature of the interests 

 758 involved and the loss that might result to Canadian enterprises 

 and commerce if the course indicated by the United States were 

 acquiesced in. I think America ought to be the last country, its repre- 

 sentatives the last people, to seek to limit the rights of exj)ostulation and 

 of action on the part of colonists. They held a very free and very correct 

 view of their rights in that regard while they were still colonists; and in 

 the time of Lord North, the Lord Salisbury of that day, they showed very 

 clearly, very plainly, and, as I believe, most justifiably, that they were 

 the best judges of what their own interests as colonists demanded. 



I pass from that. A complaint has also been made about the Bi itish 

 Commissioners; and I think it due to those gentlemen, both of whom 

 I have the honour of knowing, to say a word or two about them. 



TJnited States ^ think bcforc their conduct was criticised, before my 

 criticism oi British learned frieuds with more or less vehemence asked this 

 Commissionerd. Tribunal to regard them as partisans, as hostile witnesses 

 from whom they were at liberty to extract any admission whi(;h was in 

 their favour, but were at liberty to discard all that was not in their 

 favour — before they pronounced a judgment as to the manner in which 

 those gentlemen had performed their duties, I think it would have been 

 right in common fairness if my learned friends had referred to the man- 

 date under which those Commissioners acted. If they had done so, I 

 think they would have seen that it was impossible for them to keep out 

 of sight in their Eeport what they conceived to be the evils both of 

 management on the islands and the evils of pelagic sealing, as to which 

 they frankly and openly avowed their opinion. Their authority was 

 derived from two documents wliich aie put as the i)reface to their Eeport. 

 The first is the letter of Lord Salisbury, of the 2J:th June 1891. It is in 

 the preface to the Report, and begins with this statement: 



The Queen having been graciously pleased to appoint you to be her Commissioners 

 for the purpose of inquiring into the conditions of seal life in Behring Sea and other 

 parts of the North Pacific Ocean, I transmit to you herewith Her Majesty's com- 

 mission, etc. 



Let me in passing point out a mistake into which I venture to think 

 my learned friends have fallen when they refer to this in another con- 

 nection, which I am not now dealing with; but as it is under my eye, 

 and as I probably shall not need to recur to it again I wish to make the 

 correction in passing. 



My learned friends claim this mandate, applying not only to Behring 

 Sea but to other parts of the North Pacific Ocean, as supporting their 

 argument that regulations, protection, and jurisdiction outside of Beh- 



