b'A) ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M. P. 



Britain respectively, neither the United States nor Gieat Britain jrot 

 tlie jirant of anytbin"-; tliey merely got the acknowledgment that 

 claims ])revionsly made were to be no longer insisted upon by the 

 Nation that had put them forward. 



But, Sir, as a matter of fair play, as a matter of common justice, 

 when this is introduced by a statement is there to be one law for the 

 Atlantic and another for the Pacific? what answer is there to the fact 

 to which I invite the attention of my learned friend, Mr. Phelps, that 

 from 1783 down to the present time (and that is now more than 100 

 years) the fishing- boats of all countries liave been fishing upon the 

 Banks of JSTewfoundland outside the territorial waters without the 

 slightest attempt on the j)art of the Government of Great Britain to 

 interfere either with France, or with the United States, or with anyone 

 else; and the suggestion is entirely unfounded that we are seeking here 

 to claim from this Tribunal a right in resi)ect to the seals of the Pacific 

 which we have not conceded to the United States in respect to the cod 

 of the Atlantic. Surely, Sir, if there is to be reasonable appreciation, 

 as there must and will be, of the arguments used on the part of Great 

 Britain, it will remain for the United States advocates not to re-assert 

 a statement which at present is unsupported by any authority, but to 

 give me the date, the place and the person when, where, and by whom, 

 the assertion of the right to exclude the United States from the enjoy- 

 ment of such national rights has been asserted by Great Britain. 

 Certainly, in connection with the very caustic observation inserted at 

 pages 155 and 157, it is for ray friends to deal with the facts as I have 

 now placed them before this Tribunal; I have based my statement, as 

 you are aware, not on my imagination but upon documents which stand 

 upon record and have stood upon record for the last 50 or 60 years, nay 

 even a longer period than that. . 



Sir, the ]iext branch of my learned friend Mr, Phelps' argument is 

 that which we find on page 158. It includes a passing allusion to the 

 law of piracy, which might, I think, have been well left out of the pres- 

 ent consideration. But 1 suppose I must regard this as serious as it 

 was inserted with consideration and is to be adhered to. Calling atten- 

 tion, or arguing, rather, upon the question of the right of self-defence, 

 the sealers are practically compared to pirates, — nay more, piracy is 

 rather held up as being a pursuit to be practised, and to be approved 

 of in comparison with pelagic sealing. 



This is no exaggeration, Mr. President. At page 158 occurs this lan- 

 guage speaking of piracy: "The reason of this well settled rule is not 

 found in the character of the crime which is but robbery and murder at 

 worst." How much further do they wish to go"? ^'■Rohhery and murder 

 at ^corsV ! I want to know what other crimes there are"? "but in the 

 necessity of general defence". This is the first time. Sir, in the history 

 of argument on international law that I ever heard that the right to 

 capture and to string up and to shoot pirates was a necessity of general 

 defence, — if that means the defence of a nation in respect of its rights. 

 Sir, writer after writer, Judge after Judge, has justified the law which 

 applies in the case of pirates, on the. ground that they are ^'■hostis 

 humani generis^\ that is to say that they rob persons and outrage all 

 rules of property and morality, and, therefore, quite apart from the 

 defence of a particular nation they are to be punished when caught 

 red-handed by whom caught, or maybe taken into any Tribunal of any 

 country and there dealt with. Sir. my learned friends must have been 

 a little bit in a difficulty to find a justification for this application of 

 the law when they said that the reason for this well settled rule is not 



