ORAL ARGUMENT OF CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON, Q. C. 581 



I appreliend, therefore, and I assume, that you must consider only 

 the i^roperty in the seals. There are other difficulties attached to any 

 contention of that sort, and one difficulty which exists in regard to 

 some of the propositions which have been advanced here, as it seems 

 to me, is that in the first place the propositions are vaguely stated 

 and difficult to understand, and in the next place, they are absolutely 

 impossible to work out. What is said here is, and you find that in two 

 or three places, — at page 105, for example, of their argument — they say 

 the United States do not insist upon this extreme point, that is to say, 

 the ownership of each seal, because it is not necessary. All that is 

 needed for their purpose is that their property interest in the herd be 

 so far recognized as to justify a prohibition by them of any destructive 

 pursuit of the animal calculated to in jure the industry, and consequently 

 their interest. 



I may say in passing that I at first thought there might be some dis- 

 tinction intended between property and property interest. I do not 

 think there is, because I find at pages 50 and 91 they are used inter- 

 changeably. I cannot see for myself what distinction there is, and I 

 do not think there is any intended to be drawn. 



If that is what they claim, how is it possible to define or carry out 

 that claim or enforce it in practice. The pursuit is to be allowed until 

 it becomes destructive. Who is to determine when it is destructive? 

 A or B is carrying on pelagic sealing. He has killed a hundred seals, 

 or fifty, or whatever you may choose to say. He has not injured the 

 herd. The United States comes in and says, "Do not kill the hun- 

 dred-and-first seal, because then you will begin to injure our industry." 

 It is impossible, I submit, upon any legal principle whatever, to advance 

 a claim of that sort. They either own the seals, one and all, or they 

 do not own them. It must be either the one position or the other, and 

 the rights of others with regard to those seals if they are not theirs, 

 unless there is malice, cannot be possibly made to depend upon whether 

 the pursuit is carried to such an extent as to injure the industry founded 

 and carried on by the United States. There are no means, in other 

 words, of practically working out any such claim, nor are there any 

 means of working out, if we are right, a claim of property in the seals. 

 They feel the great difficulty, of course, of the inevitable result of their 

 claim being to entitle them to say to any i)erson pursuing a seal down 

 at Cape Flattery, "That seal belongs to the United States; do not 

 touch if'j and therefore they say they do not make their claim on that 

 ground. But if that is the logical and inevitable result of the claim as 

 they put it, they surely cannot make their claim a legal one or a sensible 

 one by saying they do not want that result. 



It IS just the same with the Indians. When their claim comes in con- 

 flict with the immemorial rights of the Indians, Oh, they say, you may 

 very well leave the Indians to us. We would not interfere with the 

 Indians, provided they carry on their pursuit in such a way as not to hurt 

 us. But the moment the pursuit of the Indians becomes an industry, 

 then it must stop. In other words, we have a right because we have an 

 industry, but the moment the Indians get an industry, then their right 

 stops. Is there any way of putting that sort of claim to make it intelli- 

 gible upon a legal basis and to a legal mind? And if all our evidence 

 is correct — and I do no more than allude to it now, because it has been 

 discussed once and may come up for further discussion when we begin 

 to speak of regulations — if our evidence on intermingling of the seals is 

 correct, it would be absolutely impossible to work out a j)roi)erty in the 

 seals, for there would be no possibility of saying, when you find a seal 



