ARGUMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



tation is not correct, tlien these Sections do not extend 

 beyond tbe territories, islands, and territorial waters of 

 Alaska Territory, and the decisions of the Courts have no 

 warrant even in the legislation of the United States. 



Considerations such as these, sapping as they do the very 

 foundations of the claim of the United States, cannot be 

 treated as other than most material to the due determina- 

 tion of the questions submitted to the Arbitrators. 



Nor is it of less importance to recapitulate with some 

 insistence and circumstance of argument the fundamental 

 principles on which the freedom of the sea reposes. 



Can it be deiued that the claim of the United States, with 

 or without its pretensions of descent from Eussia, finds no 

 warrant in these fundamental principles'? If denial were 

 possible, it would have been unnecessary to dive into the 

 Statutes of other nations for analogy. Yet never was the 

 argument from analogy put to such strange uses. Princi- 

 ples of construction have been applied to foreign laws which 

 the Judges, in whose hands the construction of those laws 

 rests, would never recognize. And on foundations so 

 loosely put together conclusions have been based at vari- 

 ance with the fundamental principles of legislatiou and 

 interi^retation. 



Shorn of all support of international law, and of justifi- 

 cation from the usage of nations, the claim of the United 

 States to possess and to protect the seals in the high sea 

 takes, at last, its final form — as claim of j^roperty. 



Yet not wholly is it rested on property. The greatest 

 jurists of the world have dealt with "property" and "pos- 

 session " in such fashion, have defined their meanings with 

 such precision of thought and language, that it is not sur- 

 prising the United States should shrink from the hopeless 

 task of attempting to formulate a new species of ownership. 

 And so, at last, driven from all the standpoints of admitted 

 and long-known rights, the argument of the United 

 7 States takes refuge in a claim for protection where 



there is no property, under circumstances so novel 

 that its supporters confess with candour that it can be 

 rested on no precedent, but that a precedent ought to be 

 established by international law to meet the exigencies of 

 the case. 



To all this shadowy claim the Government of the Queen 

 submit but one answer — the Law. 



It is sought to support this strange right by reason of 

 the industry of the United States citizens, and the benefit 

 which that industry is said to confer on the markets of the 

 world. But the rights of industry and the benefits of 

 others interested therein are already cared for by the law. 



It is said that the United States has a right to the seals 

 as to the products of the soil. Tlie law already sufficiently 

 protects the products of the soil. 



Animals are not products of the soil. The birds build- 

 ing in the trees, the rabbits burrowing in the ground, are 

 but wild animals to the law. Yet in respect of them the 

 law has already defined the extent of the rights of prop- 

 erty, and has protected these rights. 



