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less dread of the presence of man, wLetber on land or sea, than any 

 other animal that is classed as a wild animal) all the protection that 

 the law gives to animals that are domesticated, and for no other end 

 than to protect the merely technical, cruel, and unrelenting claim of 

 rights by its worst enemy, the pelagic sealer, we should never take to 

 ourselves the credit of protecting and preserving them. When we arm 

 those enemies with double-barreled shotguns, with cylinder cartridges 

 charged with buckshot, and tarn them in upon the herd to kill them 

 indiscriminately after they have congregated in great numbers and 

 are making their way to their only place of resort for the purposes 

 of procreation, we, their only protectors, become their destroyers. 

 This is not a hypothectical case or an exaggerated statement, but is 

 the simple and undeniable truth. 



This Tribunal, by such a decree, will deny to the fur-seal species, all 

 over the world, that protection which themunicipal law has always freely 

 and even eagerly extended to all harmless, docile, and useful animals that 

 are valuable to man for food and raiment. We will put upon them the 

 ban of outlawry only because they must go into the sea for food, and 

 because they do not need to be converted from their natural condition or 

 disposition by the discipline or the temptations of the skill of man that 

 must be used in taming savage beasts. Nature having dispensed with 

 all necessity for such inducements and manipulations to overcome any 

 avei-sion of the fur-seals to the dominion of man, and having delivered 

 them into his hands as a free gift, to be used at his pleasure and to 

 meet a want that no other animal can supply, the law steps in and 

 declares that because nature has done this, and has so placed it out 

 of man's power to make the seals any more docile and tame by induce- 

 ments and manipulations than they are by nature, the fur-seals can 

 never, as a class, become domestic or domesticated animals, and can 

 receive no legal protection in the sea. They are forever excluded on 

 such grounds from the legal possi])ility of domestication, and are handed 

 over to the most formidable enemy that ever hunted any animal, tame 

 or wild, doomed to inevitable destruction. 



I dissent from such opinion as being contrary to the laws of God and 

 the often-expressed legislative intentions of man; but I yield to it as 

 the sincere judgment of this Tribunal, and refer to it to show how much 

 greater is the necessity now resting upon this Tribunal in the amplitude of 

 its powers supplied to them, for this occasion and for that purpose, to afford 

 substantial protection for the preservation of the species. I will explain 



