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



would have a riglit to sboot it. ' The only case, as I endeavoured to point 

 out to the Tribunal on the last occasion, in which property is given in 

 such animals, is when possession is taken; and possession is not taken 

 by marking a wild animal and letting it go. 



Sir, some of my learned friends seem to think, from this point of 

 view, there was some analogy between the seals and the cattle on the 

 plains of America. That was fully dealt with by the Attorney General ; 

 but perhaps I may be allowed to remind you that the whole principle 

 upon which the legislation (for it is legislation) has proceeded in the 

 United States, has been that the animals could be rounded up at any 

 time and were, in fact, rounded up from year to year; and, as the 

 Attorney General reminded you, particular provisions as to marks were 

 directed by Statute. I cannot better illustrate my meaning than by 

 referring to an argument made by Senator Morgan when I was arguing 

 this question of property the other day. He said you may not like to 

 call it property; as long as the seal is on the Islands, the United States 

 or the lessees have absolute dominion over them. I should not agree 

 that perhaps "dominion" was the strictly accurate word to express the 

 right or j)rivilege of capturing. But I will accept it for the purpose of 

 the argument. Did anyone ever hear of dominion extending beyond 

 a kingdom ; or of dominion extending beyond territory ; and if it were a 

 correct analogy to describe whatever power and rights the United States 

 have over the seals while on the Islands or in territorial waters as being- 

 dominion, one wants no better illustration for showing that that domin- 

 ion stops when the animal leaves the Island or the territorial waters 

 and goes out on to the high seas ? Therefore, I ask the Tribunal to come 

 to the conclusion that from the point of view of any act which is suj)- 

 posed to be an equivalent of taking possession, no possession has ever 

 been taken; and if in the case put to me the other day, that there is an 

 attempt to take possession by driving the seals, with regard to all the 

 seals that are not captured and killed the attempt fails or is abandoned; 

 but nothing equivalent, either in law or in fact, to the taking of posses- 

 sion in any way occurs. 



In this connection, I was asked, or my learned friend the Attorney 

 General was asked, also I think by Senator Morgan with regard to the 

 question of whether there was not some ground for the theory that all 

 gamebelouged to the State — belonged in England totheKing: and Ipre- 

 sume the Senator would endeavour to draw the analogy that it belonged 

 in the United States to the State. Sir, I am not surprised at that ques- 

 tion being put ; and, although it is of purely academic interest, perhaps I 

 may be allowed in one or two sentences to give my answer in regard to 

 that matt(!r. Under the old Forest Laws, the King had the exclusive 

 privilege of killing game in royal forests. If the game wandered from 

 the forests, anyone had a right to kill them ; and, although there were 

 writers, and among them Sir William Blackstone, who expressed the 

 view that the origin of the Game Laws originally was the proi)erty in 

 wild animals being vested in the King, the theory was exposed in a 

 very learned note by a lawyer of the name of Christian, — Christian's 

 edition of Blackstone, — and by perhaps the greatest autliority on this 

 question, Mr. Chitty who wrote on the "Prerogatives of the Crown-' in 

 the work to which my learned friend the Attorney General called atten- 

 tion; and it is the fact, that there is no case and no decision which in 

 any way limited, — no instance either criminal or civil in which a party 

 has been sued or prosecuted on behalf of the King for taking game unless 

 he took it within some privileged place. On the contrary, it is laid down 

 that no individual can be indicted at Common Law for stealing animals 



