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



Now I have coiiie to the end of that correspondence, and I Avill not 

 more pointedly refer to the inaccuracies, as I submit I have now shown 

 them to be, of the United States Arf>umeut than to say this, that tliis 

 correspondence clearly shows that whatever assertion was made in the 

 first instance was not an assertion of a general riijht of visitation and 

 search, but was a right put forward as a right undoubted, I admit, by 

 Lord Paliuerston, who used that language, of visitation for the purpose 

 of establishing the nationality of the ship : that from the assertion of 

 that right, in the emphatic language which I read earlier, he retired: 

 and that that view is expressly disclaimed by the responsible minister 

 of the Crown in his place in Parliament, acting upon the opinion of the 

 Law Ofhcers of the day, and reiterated and communicated in the cor- 

 respondence whicli I have just read. 

 1120 Lord Hannen. — What did those proposals result in? 



Sir Charles Eussell. — In a Treaty of 18G2. I thought I had 

 it here to refer to it, but 1 have not, my Lord. 



Lord Hannen. — I only wanted a general statement to what extent 

 they were adopted. 



Sir Charles Eussell. — Shortly put it is this : a Treaty was entered 

 into between the United States and Great Britain, by which was mutu- 

 ally conceded to the ships of war of each Power the right under the 

 general conditions I have read to search vessels bearing the flag of the 

 other, in order to ascertain if it were the true flag. The Treaty, was 

 confined in its operation to the waters in which the West African slave- 

 trade would have been carried on. 



General Foster. — In 1862? 



Sir Charles Eussell. — I think so. 



The Presidet^t. — And I think in the Treaty between France and 

 England that not even so much as that was conceded. 



Sir Charles Eussell. — No, not till a later period. France has 

 always been very staunch in denying any right of interference with its 

 ships upon the high seas, even under these extreme circumstances as 

 they were considered. She always strenuously denied the right in any 

 form, and even as a matter of agreement she was very slow and chary 

 in altering the j)osition she assumed. 



I now pass on to another matter. You will see at the end of page 

 162 of the Argument an innocent little passage, as it looks there, taken 

 from Azuui, which, if I did not explain the context, might lead to a 

 very wrong conclusion indeed as to its meaning. 



Azuni carries tlie principle still further, and holds that even national ri<!jht8 should 

 yield to the rights of another nation, when the consequences to the latter are the 

 more important. 



A very broad proposition indeed. 



When the perfect right of one nation clashes with the perfect right of another, 

 reason, justice, and humanity require that in such case the one that will experience 

 the least damage should yield to the other. 



Well, if it has any application to this case that would mean that it 

 is more important to the United States to keep to the industry of kill- 

 ing seals on the Pribilof Islands than it can be to Canadian fishermen 

 to pursue pelagic sealing on the high seas, and therefore pelagic seal- 

 ers should on that ground give way. 



But I cannot think that my learned friend Mr. Phelps had leisure to 

 read the context, or he would not have cited this passage, because 

 when the context is read, his citation is, to say the least, amusing. My 

 learned friend, Mr. Box, has been good enough to summarize the whole 



