204 



means necessary to prevent the commission of tliose acts. In the case 

 before us it appears, by overwhehning evidence, that if prelagic sealing 

 continues to any material extent, the important industry which the 

 United States has established and maintains, at great expense, on the 

 Pribilof Islands, for purposes of revenue and commerce, and for the 

 benefit of all countries, must perish by the acts of individuals and as- 

 sociations of individuals committed beyond its jurisdictional limits, on 

 the high seas, where the ships and peoples of all nations are upon an 

 equality — an industry which has never been interfered with until pelagic 

 sealers devised their barbarous methods for slaughtering female seals, 

 some impregnated, some heavy with young, and others suckling mothers 

 in search of food for the sustenance of themselves and their offspring. 

 If, as already suggested, these acts are done in the exercise of a right 

 recognized and secured by the law of nations, then they can not be 

 prevented or restrained by the United States, however injurious they 

 may be to any business conducted within the territory of that nation. 

 But if those acts are not recognized and protected by the law of nations; 

 if no one can claim that all the nations have assented to the doing of that 

 on the high seas which no single nation would permit to be done within 

 its own territory; in short, if no one has the right, for mere temporary 

 gain, to destroy useful animals by methods that will inevitably and 

 speedily result in the extermination of the race, then the United States, 

 whose revenue aiul commerce are directly involved in the preservation of 

 that race, may, consistently with the law of nations, protect its interests 

 by preventing the commission of those wrongful acts. 



If the views which I have expressed are shared by a majority of the 

 Arbitrators, the answer to the fifth question of Article VI of the treaty 

 should be 



That the herd of fur seals frequenting the islands of St. Paul and St. 

 George in Bering Sea, when found in tlie ocean, beyond the ordinary 

 three-mile limit, are the property of the United States, and as long as 

 these animals have the habit of returning from their migration-routes 

 to, and of abiding upon, those islands, as their breeding grounds, 

 so that their increase may be regularly taken there, and not elsewhere, 

 without endangering the existence of the race, that nation, in virtue of 

 its ownership of such herd and islands, may rightfully employ, for the 

 protection of those animals against pelagic sealing, such means as the 

 law i)ermits to individuals for the protection of their property; and, 



That independently of any riglit of i^roperty in the herd itself, the 



