191 



its usefulness; that property is a general, constant, universal fact, as 

 indispensable to tlie existence of man as liberty is to his welfare; that, 

 in all ages and in all countries, man has instituted property as the nec- 

 cessarj^ reward of labor, and that property has become a law of his 

 species. Bl: ii, cltopters 1, 2, 3, and i. But no writer has ever main- 

 tained the monstrous proposition that society when instituting prop- 

 erty, recognized the wanton, reckless extermination of a race of useful 

 animals as one of the rights inherent in man, or as tolerated by the prin- 

 ciples of justice, benevolence, and right which constitute the basis of 

 the law of nations. All will concede that one of the great objects, if 

 not the supreme object, which society exi)octedto accomplish by the 

 institution of property, was to preserve and increase those things, ani- 

 mate and inanimate, that are bestowed upon man for his use. Man- 

 kind is entitled to participate in the enjoyment of the things thus be- 

 stowed upon the world, and that it may do so, society recognizes the 

 right of every one to ajipropriate to his own use such things as suscepti- 

 ble of ownership, have not been appropriated by others. He is allowed, 

 under given circumstances, to appropriate to himself, exclusively, val- 

 uable animals ferce natiirw, but he may not, of right, exterminate the 

 race itself. 



If, by care, industry, and self-deuial, he can bring the race under 

 such control that he, and he alone, is able to deal with it as a wlioJe^ 

 taking the increase without diminishing the stock, then as I have 

 alread endeavored to show, a lecognitiou of a rigiit of property in 

 him is not only a fair and just return for the care, industry, and self- 

 denial bestowed by him, but is consistent with the objects for which 

 property has been instituted. But he cannot, without committing a 

 wrong against society, exterminate the race itself, either from mere 

 wantonness or by the employment of methods that inevitably lead to 

 that result. 



With entire truth, therefore, it may be said that the extermination 

 of tbis race of animals by the destructive methods of pelagic sealing, 

 involving necessarily the killing in vast numbers of female seals heavy 

 with young or nursing their pups, or impregnated, is a crime against the 

 law of nature, and consequently without any sanction whatever in thelaw 

 of nations. That law, indeed, recognizes the freedom of the seas for the 

 peoples of all nations, and no nations have stood more firmly by that 

 doctrine or are more interested in its enforcement than Great Britain 

 and the United States. But I have not found in any treatise upon in- 



