70 



ocean is i\cvr. It. is an innovation that destroys tlie snbject to which 

 it applies. If this is a right which the international law must recog- 

 nize, although it is almost universally denounced by municipal law, it 

 must be limited to a reasonable use, as all privileges are limited. As 

 it is practiced by pelagic sealers at this day it receives the condemna- 

 tion of international law, because it sacriiices and destroys the benefits 

 of the seal herds to the commerce of the world and imposes on the 

 United States very serious burdeiis in preserving the seals for the 

 private advantage of persons engaged in an organized hunt, while 

 denying the right of her own citizens to take them. 



The United States must protect the seals against her own people or 

 else they will be speedily destroyed. If in doing this all her care and 

 expense are turned to naught by a rule of international law, she can 

 only abandon the seals to their fate, let the islands become barren 

 of all value, and console herself with the reflection that her sacrifice 

 adds a i^ower to the international law that is more authoritative than 

 the judgment of all the nations of the earth, except Canada. 



It is a new and very dangerous phase of the riglitsof fishermen that 

 they can lawfully combine to destroy fish and use the agencies that 

 are necessarily destructive of a given species of fish under the pro- 

 tection of international law. It is still more dangerous if they can 

 lawfully waylay the fisli at nariow passages between islands and 

 destroy them as they approach the shores and bays of a neighboring 

 nation, and yet more dangerous if they can lawfully form a cordon -of 

 vessels, with great numl)ers of men aimed with shotguns, just outside 

 the 3-mile limit, and can kill seals that are fiee breathing as well as 

 free-swimming animals, wheneverthey rise to the surfacefor air and come 

 in range of their guns, while they are passing to and fro in search of sus- 

 tenance for themselves and their offsju-iiig. Yet all these combiinitions 

 and practices are lawful, if the right of pelagic hunting of fur-seals is 

 the same — no more and no less — with the right of fishing in the liigh 

 seas. 



It is not surprising, in view of such serious results as would follow 

 the practice of jiclagic sealing, and have already resulted fiom it, 

 where it is placed on the same footing with the right of fishing in the 

 open sea, that the power to ordain concurrent regulations for its con- 

 trol, or prohibiti<m, was given to a Tribnnal of Arbitration. 



It is only by regulations, and not by advice, or by the statement of 

 the principles of law that govern the case, that these matters can be 

 settled. 



