ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M. P. 515 



Now, I should ask the Senator kindly to let me read this great author- 

 ity upon the question which he introduced a moment ago into my 

 argument, as to whether seals are domestic or not. 



What has been said above applies to animals which have remained at all times 

 wild; and if wild animals have been tamed — 



Is there any living being who suggests that these seals have been 

 tamed? Could any reasonable man suggest it for a moment. 



if wild animals have been tamed, and they by habit go out and return, fly away — 



That means with a tamed habit, 



such as deer, swans, scafowls, and doves, and such like, another rule has been 

 approved that they are so long considered as ours as long as they have the disposi- 

 tion to return ; for if they have no disposition to return they cease to be ours. But 

 they seem to cease to have the disposition to return when they have abandoned the 

 habit of returning; and the same is said of fowls aud geese which have become wild 

 after being tamed. 



Mr. President, there is not, I submit, the shadow of a doubt that this 

 habit of returning means the habit of returning after they have been 

 tamed, not the habit of returning while they are in a wild condition. 



The President. — You made your case perhaps easier in saying that 

 the seals had been stated to be tame. They were not precisely argued 

 to be tame. They were argued to be the object of what Mr. Carter 

 called a husbandry. 



Sir EiCHARD Webster. — With great deference, Mr. President, there 

 is no case in which what my friend Mr. Carter calls the creation of a 

 husbandry has been supposed to be equivalent either to taming or taking 

 possession of the animal. The sparing and not slaughtering the whole, 

 the abstaining from the right to kill on your land never has been sug- 

 gested as giving j)roperty. I could give you instances without number. 

 Why, in the case of the rabbits, there is not as much husbandry in the 

 seals as there is in the rabbits. It seems to me, Sir, that the mere 

 statement of the case of rabbits is sufficient. The rabbit man, on the 

 hypothesis, may construct the burrows. Nothing of that kind is done 

 for the seal. No house is built for them. Tbe man, if he chooses to do 

 it, can feed the rabbits, to induce them to return. 



The President. — You compare the seal to the rabbit, upon which 

 there is no doubt. Suppose we com])are them with the bee. The bee is 

 not a tame animal. 



Sir EiCHARD Webster. — Let me compare it. Sir, with the case of the 

 bee. In the case of the bee, the man builds the hive, builds the house 

 in which the stock is going to be hived. As a matter of fact, as you no 

 doubt know perfectly well, he does 'in hard weather actually feed the 

 bees, and he does make convenient places in which the bee can store its 

 honey; and modern invention has actually assisted him in the formation 

 of the comb in which the honey will be placed. 



Lord Hannen. — Those are the grounds upon which the French law 

 is based in the case you refer to. 



The President. — You know you just objected to calling the pigeons 

 tame. You would not call the bees tame, either. I think the word 

 "tame" is not quite correct. 



Sir EiCHARD Webster. — I am afraid, Mr. President, I did not make 

 my meaning clear. I did not object to your calling the pigeons tame. 

 I merely suggested I was not dealing with the case of tame animals in 

 that sense, but of animals which had been by the act of man induced to 

 take up a lodging in his dovecote, to go out and return, and I desired the 

 distinction to be drawn so that you would not think I was referring to 



