ORAL ARGUMENT OF CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON, Q. C. 607 



certain sense, lie has no right to do otherwise. In the case I first pnt 

 it might be fairly said that it would be disgraceful and discreditable to 

 him if he dissipated his property and left those dependent on him in 

 Avant; but the world is full of such instances, and also of people who 

 deplore them and would do anything to prevent them, and who if it 

 were possible to make a law to reach them, would try to make that law. 

 But no nation has attempted to do it, and no sensible man has attempted 

 it; and yet they say it is upon such principles this question between 

 these two great nations is to be decided by this Tribunal. 



I venture to say, with great resj^ect, it is impossible so to decide a 

 question of this sort, and if those are said to be the decisive tests, very 

 few minutes' argument will show that they are tests which can not decide 

 that question, if we are right in saying that the question submitted to 

 the Tribunal relates to rights to be decided according to law. 



I will not delay the Tribunal by going into the further question of the 

 necessity and propriety of applying to everything which is capable of 

 ownership, or giving to everything capable of ownership, an ownervship, 

 except to say' that one reason on which it is said to be founded does not 

 seem to me to apply here. One of the main reasons is that the arts 

 would not be practised, that the fruits of the earth would not be ren- 

 dered available, uidess the institution of i^roperty was awarded to 

 encourage ijeople to exercise their industry- so as to obtain for themselves 

 and for others those benefits. I have never heard it said that the 

 awarding of property in animals /era? naturce to the first man that can 

 take them has discouraged the practice of hunting. On the contrary, 

 it is that on which it rests. The only way to get these animals is by the 

 chase; and nobody has said that animals ferce naturce are not made 

 available to human wants to the best extent they can be by the practice 

 of hunting, which is the art, I suppose, referred to in connection with 

 that subject. 



Then they say these animals are useful, and an object of eager human 

 desire, and that there is no substitute for them. 



Is not that language very greatly exaggerated? Is there any one 

 thing — perhaps you n)ight include three or four others, — without which 

 the world could do better than seal skins'? Seal-skins and diamonds, 

 and things of that sort, are about equally useful and equally necessary. I 

 admit thatthey are valuable, and I admit it is desirable to have them ; but 

 when you say that they are eager objects of human desire, they are eager 

 objects of human desire to some of the people who can afibrd to pay for 

 them, and with some few only even of those; and to speak of them as 

 one of the things which there is any special necessity to continue to 

 give to the world is to exaggerate, and to say what has no reasonable 

 or proper, or sensible application to the subject we are considering. 



Then, I desire to say a few words on the question of cruelty and of 

 waste. Now, my learned friends, in many sentences, — (I have them all 

 before me, or I have them near by) — at all events, in 8 or 10 sentences, 

 at least, at different places, have as part of their argument, and in that 

 part of the case which deals with the right of property and protection, 

 not with Regulations, charged the pelagic sealers with cruelty, involving 

 useless suffering; and with waste. 



Now, first, I would ask, how far can either of those charges have any 

 bearing whatever upon, or any relation whatever to, the question of the 

 right of property? Their charge is that we are either injuring their 

 industry, or destroying their property. Does it make a particle of differ- 

 ence whether it is done cruelly or not? T am not sponking of cruelty as 

 I hope to do in a few minutes, or del ending it. I consider simply the 



