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



the two countries Avill, of course, be mntter for the consideration of the respective 

 Governments, while the KegiUations alVectinjac waters outside the territorial limits 

 will have to be considered under clause 6 of the Arbitration Agreement. 



I say that no (;aiuli(l man — and 1 think ray friends are candid men — 

 could read this without seeing that it was impossible for the Commis- 

 sioners to have avoided going into the matters which they did go into. 

 The consideration of pelagic sealing involved the question whether it 

 had necessarily incident to it all the evils whi(;h were attributed to it; 

 the consideration of the management of the islands involved the ques- 

 tions whether it was the impeccable system which its friends professed 

 it to be, or whether there were not to be found in this management 

 some explanatory contributor}'^ cause of the admitted decrease in the 

 numbers of the seal herd. 



Mr. Carter. — I did not object to their going into those things. You 

 do not impute that to me; do you? 



Sir Charles Kussell. — 1 rather thought my friend's argument — I 

 may have misconceived it — amounted to this: "1, counsel for the United 

 States" — and from that point of view I can quite understand my 

 friend's position — "begin by laying down the proposition that pelagic 

 sealing is a moral crime, that it is an unjustitiable wrong, that it is 

 brutal, something a little worse than murder, and almost as bad as 

 piracy." From that point of view I can quite understand his impa- 

 tience with a man who has anything to say even in mitigation of ])elagic 

 sealing; but from the point of view of the Commissioners, I venture to 

 say that they were perfectly within the lines of their duty, nay, that 

 they would not have fullllled their duty, provided they did it honestly, 

 if they had not presented their views for consideration. But, as a 

 matter of fact, if you will examine that very lengthy Eeport of the 

 British Commissioners, it will be found that nine-tenths of it is a record 

 of facts; and jierhaps the highest tribute — it ought to be almost enough 

 for me to say this — the highest tribute to their impartiality is to be 

 found in the fact that in the enforcement of their positions on the sub- 

 ject of regulations, and indeed in some respects upon the subject of 

 property, my learned friends have cited much more frequently from the 

 Keport of the British Commissioners than they have felt themselves 

 justiiied in citing from the Keport of their own Commissioners. 



I am not going to malvC any attack upon the United States Commis- 

 sioners. 1 have no such purpose. They take the standpoint that no 

 killing should be permitted except upon the islands. If the British 

 Commissioners had followed the same line of argument, I suppose that 

 they would, if they had been partisans, have insisted that no killing 

 should take place except at sea; and they certainly would have 

 761 had this in their favour, as I have previously pointed out, that 

 whatever else may be said of pelagic sealing, it cannot be truly 

 convicted of ever having caused the extermination of the seal in any 

 part of the world where pelagic sealing merely was practised. 



But in this connection, and before the Tribunal rises, and in order 

 that I may dismiss this topic, I would i^oint out that both my learned 

 friends take this lofty tone as regards pelagic sealing: yet driven by 

 pressure of argument going on involuntarily in their own minds, aided 

 a little, I will admit, by certain questions addressed to them in the course 

 of argument from the bench, my learned friends have been 

 aif aL^to^iiuiians Obliged to pursuc a course utterly and completely incon- 

 inconsistent with sistcut witli their profcssiou as to pelagic sealing. Why! 

 of unfted'"slates* Bccausc my learned friend, Mr. Carter, driven, as I say, 

 by stress of argument and by the natural candour of his 



