82 



exists and may be protected wlicii tlie seals are found inside tlio 

 acknowledged territorial limits of the islands. 



This claim of property in the United States, if it exists and so far 

 as it is not affected by prescription, is based npon tlie habits of the 

 animals which make them domesticated property and subjects them 

 absolutely to the possession, dominion, and use of the United States 

 by an irrevocable law of nature, which supplies a just foundation for 

 its protective legislation. 



The right of "exclusive jurisdiction of the United States'^ to protect 

 the seals "found outside the ordinary three-mile limit" is a right that 

 is based on moral, or municipal, or international law, or upon all those 

 laws combined in support of justice, the protection of commerce, and 

 in aid of humanity and the peace and good will of nations. 



The right of the United States to this property is neither greater nor 

 less, when it is based on the nature and habits of the seals, because 

 Russia may have asserted or exercised " exclusive rights in the seal 

 fisheries ^^ in Bering Sea; nor is the right to protect the property 

 necessarily dependent upon the answer to the question, " What exclu- 

 sive jurisdiction in Bering Sea did Eussia assert and exercise?" While 

 this right and this jurisdiction are correlated, they are not identical, 

 nor do they depend necessarily upon each other in the form in which 

 they are stated in the five points of Article VI. 



If the arbitrators find that the United States have no " exclusive 

 jurisdiction" to protect "the fur-seals in, or habitually resorting to the 

 I'ering Sea," such a decision must mean that, as between the United 

 States and Great Britain, whose subjects claim the right to take the 

 seals wherever found " outside the jurisdictional limits of the respective 

 Governments," the consent of Great Britain is necessary in that area 

 of the sea, to supply such lack of jurisdiction by "concurrent regula- 

 tions" to suppress, or control, pelagic hunting. And, if the Arbitra- 

 tors hold that they have no power, in that event, to protect the seals 

 by ordaining concurrent regulations for that puriiose, and if the United 

 States have no lawful power to protect them, and, if Great Britain will 

 not consent to a joint protection of them, they will perish utterly. 



If the arbitrators hold that the United States have the "exclusive 

 jurisdiction" to protect and preserve the fur seals "outside their juris- 

 dictional limitSy^^ (which is a solecism), because they are the exclusive 

 owners of the seals: or, if they hold that pelagic hunting outside the 

 ordinary territorial limits of three miles around the seal islands does 



