608 ORAL ARGUMENT OF CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON, Q. C. 



legal question. Has the question of cruelty, or the fact of cruelty or 

 the absence of it, anything to do with the right of property, or can it 

 have? 



Suppose the pelagic sealers tortured to death every seal they cap- 

 tured, but did not injure the United States industry, and supposing 

 those seals were not the property of the United States, or even that 

 they were the property of the United States, the fact that we tortured 

 them to death would not make any difference in their rights. They 

 could recover if they have a claim for the injury to the industry or if 

 they own the seals. Suppose we tortured to death every seal killed 

 but did not hurt the industry, what possible riglit could that give them 

 to complain? Supjiose, on the other hand, we chloroformed every seal 

 we killed, and they did not suffer at all, but still we killed enough to 

 injure the industry, then they would have a right to complain because 

 we had injured it. Cruelty has no bearing upon the matter, as 1 sub- 

 mit. If so why were those charges introduced here, if not simply to 

 endeavour to prejudice our claim, which is adverse to their own, by 

 sensational charges which have no bearing on the legal rights or legal 

 wrongs of the case? 



In the next place, what has our waste to do with the question of 

 legal right? My learned friends were asked very emi^hatically and 

 distinctly by the learned Attorney General to define their position. 

 Do they mean to say their right depends in any way or sense upon the 

 mode in which we deal with these seals — economically or uneconom- 

 ically — wastefully or with an absence of waste? No answer was 

 returned to that. I do not ask the question again, because I am cer- 

 tain that what they would not tell the learned Attorney General they 

 are unlikely to tell me. 



Now let us see what effect it can have. Can the question of whether 

 a thing is my property or not depend upon the use which some (me else 

 makes of it, wasteful or economical, when he gets it, or the use he is 

 ■going to make of it? If it is my property I am entitled to it. If it is 

 not mypropeity, howcan the fact that when he gets it he intends to burn 

 it or sink it in the sea or destroy it, tend to make it my property? 

 Again, how can the question of waste affect their jight to protect their 

 industry? If we kill 1,000 seals and it affects their industry, and they 

 have a right to prevent our affecting their industry by the destruction 

 of seals, how can it affect the question what we do with the seals? 

 Their industry either prevails over ours or it does not. If it does pre- 

 vail over ours, we have no right to exercise ours in any way, econom- 

 ically or uneconomically, to their prejudice; and if it does not prevail 

 over ours, as we contend, we have a right to exercise, ours. But how 

 the waste, or rather uneconomical use, of the thing itself which they 

 claim a right to protect, by us when we take it can affect the question, 

 I have always been unable to understand, and I venture to submit 

 every other person who considers it with a view to working out the 

 question of property, will also be. 



Then my learned friend the Attorney General calls my attention to 

 the fact that the same argument is used by Mr. Coudert as a portion 

 of his argument at page 713, in answer to the charge of mismanage- 

 ment on the Islands that we were then making: 



One single word more as to the management. The British Government have 

 endeavoured to show that too many male seals have been killed on the Pribilof 

 Islands beginning with the year 1870, and that a gradual deterioration in the herd 

 has been taking place. Even if this could be show^n it would form no justification 

 for pelagic sealing, and would therefore be considered irrelevant. Su]»j)ose it were 

 truej suppose the United States had been reckless or had employed corrupt and bad 



