ORAL ARGUMENT OP SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M. P. 553 



I am further of the opiiiion that Parliament has a perfect right to say to foreign 

 ships that they shall not, without complying with I5ritish law, enter into British 

 ports, and that if they do enter they shall be subject to penalties unless they have 

 previously coiuplied with the requisitions ordained by the British Parliament; 

 whether those requisitions be, as in former times, certificates of origin, or clearances 

 of any description from a foreign port, or clean bills of health, or the taking on 

 board a pilot at any place in or out of British jurisdictiou before entering British 

 waters. Whether the Parliament has so legislated is now the question to be con- 

 sidered. 



Therefore, Mr. President, I ask the Tribunal in considering tlie argu- 

 ment I have addressed to you on this matter, to say tliere is absolutely 

 no analogy; it falls within the principle I enunciated before the adjourn- 

 ment to day that these laws are intended to operate and to have effect 

 only ou vessels coming to our own country and to our own ports and 

 upon our own vessels; those were the words nsed by Mr. Justice Story 

 in the case of the "Apollon" which will be found reported in the 9th 

 Wheaton. 



Then Mr. Phelps at pages 160 to 163 asserts in his argument that 

 Great Britain has claimed the right of search in time of peace. I am 

 going to make but one observation with regard to that matter. We 

 were of course surprised when we found the reference made to the letter 

 of Lord Aberdeen. We sent for that letter and the Tribunal have now 

 before it the original letter of Lord Aberdeen, the contemporaneous 

 letter of Mr. Stevenson who represented the United States speaking of 

 the year 1811, and again we have the debate and diplomatic correspond- 

 ence in the years 1858 and 1859. 



The result of that being that so far from it being true that Great 

 Britain had never abandoned, if she ever claimed, but still insists upon 

 this right of search in time of peace, the very document referred to by 

 my learned friend in his argument contains the most complete and 

 absolute refutation of the argument put into the mouth of Great Britain 

 on behalf of the United States. 



Sir, I believe that, without, of course, pretending to say that I have 

 covered the ground in the same way npon this part of the case as my 

 learned friend the Attorney-General did, I believe that I have noted 

 all of the heads of argument on the question of protection which have 

 been cited by Mr. Phelps in support of his view. And I come back to 

 that principle upon which, and by which in my submission to this Tri- 

 bunal, this case must be determined, so far as this matter is concerned. 

 If the United States have got the right of property in the seals or in the 

 seal herd, that property does not cease when those seals leave the ter- 

 ritorial waters of Behring Sea; and I should admit that from the ])oiut 

 of view of what may be called defence in that sense — that if the United 

 States, or the representative of the lessees could say to the lielagic 

 sealer a thousand miles south of the Pribilof Islands, or in the Gulf of 

 Alaska, or away to the west of those islands of which I gave the name 

 this morning, "That seal which you are going to shoot is mine, you 

 must not shoot it", he would be allowed to take measures, not to break 

 the peace, but to take measures to prevent the seal being shot, and in 

 a municipal court, if the man who had shot the seal came into the juris- 

 diction, so that he could be sued, might have the right to bring what 

 we call an action of trover or an action for the value of the seal. 



Senator Morgan. — Or if the ship was brought into the Prize Court, 

 they could proceed against the ship? 



Sir Richard Webster. — No I have never heard of such a thing as 

 a proceeding in a Prize Court because a piece of property was taken 

 except in time of war. It is foreign to the whole principle of our juris- 



