ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 207 



the control, whether effective or not I do not care, by which raiders are 

 kept off by the representatives of the United States, or of the lessees, 

 upon the Islands, they do nothing-, except the negative act of not knock- 

 ing some of them on the liead, exercising, with regard to killing, as I 

 have said, a certain amount of discrimination. 



Do they do anything to induce them to go there? No, they do not. 

 On the contrary, if they were to attemx)t by any kind of artifi(;ial 

 means to provide for the reception of the seals, it would have the effect 

 of driving them away, not of inducing them to come. Unlike the case 

 of the bees, — the wild hive of bees, for which the man desiring that 

 hive provides a mechanical contrivance, and also the beginning of a sup- 

 ply of food for them to induce them to form their combs of honey, — 

 unlike the case of the doves, for which the owner supplies food and a 

 dovecote where they get shelter from the weather, the owners of the 

 Pribiloft' Islands do nothing ; and if they were to do anything, it would 

 have the effect of repelling rather than of inducing them to come. 



I*^ow, let me go a little further. It is said that they come to the 

 Islands, and I think I must refer to the very words in which this is put, — 

 I could not do justice to the pathetic language used in this case if I did 

 not read it, — it is said, not only do they come to the Islands, but that 

 they "voluntarily submit themselves to the control of man", and have 

 entered into a kind of treaty ("pact" I think is the actual word used) 

 to yield up a certain i)roportion of their skins in consideration of the 

 protection that man affords them and in return for it. Let me read it, 

 so that it may not be said I am doing an injustice to this passage. I 

 read from page 92 of their Argument. — 



lu the added light thrown by this inquiry into the foiiudations of the institution 

 of property the case of the fur-seal can bo no longer open to doubt, if it ever was. 

 It is a tyijical instance. 



Now, this is the sentence which I desire to read. 



Polygamous in its nature, compelled to breed upon the laud, and confined to that 

 element for half the year, gentle and confiding in disposition, nearly defenceless 

 against attack, it seems almost to implore the protection of man, and to offer to 

 908 him as a reward thatsuperfinity of increase >vhich is not needed for a continu- 

 ance of the race. 



The other passage to which I wish to refer, where the phrase is used, 

 is on page 47. 



The Alaskan fui--seals are a typical instance for the application of this doctrine. 

 They are by the imperious and unchangeable instincts of their nature impelled to 

 return from their wanderings to the same place ; they are defenseless against man, 

 and in returning to the same place voluntarily subject themselves to his i>ower, and 

 enable him to treat them in the same way and to obtain from them the same bene- 

 fits as may be had in the case of domestic auimals. 



Now, what is the meaning of thatijhrase, " voluntarily submit them- 

 selves to his power"? Does it, in fact, mean more than that they come 

 to the Islands and breed, and that, being on the Islands to breed, they 

 can be the more readily knocked on the head? But, in the sense of 

 saying that they do voluntarily and of their own free-will submit them- 

 selves to the control of man, the idea is absurd on the face of it and it 

 is unsupported by facts. They come, "by the imperious necessity of 

 their nature" (if 1 am to adopt that rather grandiloquent expression, 

 which I am willing to do), to breed on the Islands; they are in a posi- 

 tion in which man can readily knock them on the head; but it is absurd 

 to say that they come to the Islands to submit themselves, or that they 

 do submit themselves, voluntarily, by the exercise of any volition on 

 their part, to the control of man, in the same sense of the word as 

 domesticated animals undoubtedly do. 



