120 



my iiieaning wlien I say that the outlawry of the fur-seal species is con- 

 trary to tbe laws of God. Hundreds or thousands of years ago these 

 animals and the Aleuts were brought iu contact by the directing hand 

 of Providence along the shores and on the islands of Bering Sea. 

 No tree, no fruit, or grain, or grass, or cattle were there to sup- 

 Xiort human life; but men were there, who subsisted on these fur-seals 

 and were clothed in their skins. This was nearly the only food and 

 raiment tliey could obtain in a climate as inhospitable and in a country 

 as rugged and dreary as any on the habitable globe. 



Only one hundred and fifty years ago, a powerful nation, Russia, 

 came with her great ships and armaments and took the country and 

 the people and the seal herds, by right of discovery, and supported its 

 right by the title known to the law of nations as title by discovery — a 

 most tyrannical and fraudulent maxim of international law which the 

 civilized world has now practically abandoned. If this had never been 

 done, the Aleuts would now be the owners and rulers of that country j 

 and the question we are now discussing would be whether, under 

 internaticnal law as it is now, the food and raiment — the only valuable 

 resource of these poor and helpless people — could be taken by any great 

 1)0 wer and the people left to ])erish. In that case the consensus of the 

 civilized powers would be that those animals should be considered the 

 property of the Aleuts, the owners of the breeding islands, and when 

 they left the coasts with the intention to return and visited the ocean 

 for food, that they should at least be attended with the protection that 

 is given by the law of all civilized nations to domesticated animals. 

 This is the law of God, who first gave these animals to those northern 

 tribes and made them the staff" of life to them by reason of their docil- 

 ity, the regularity of their coming into the service of those people, and 

 their complete submission to that service. 



That law is not changed because the United States, a powerful and 

 wealthy nation, has assumed to make provision for these people while 

 lifting them into a higher civilization and finds in the fur-seals the reve- 

 nue that is needed for these jnirposes. For more than one hundred 

 years Great Britain and her subjects have known the fact that Eussia 

 and the United States have made these fur-seals the basis of a valuable 

 industry; a means of providing for the Aleuts; an instrumentality of 

 government; and almost the only source of revenue that country pos- 

 sessed. It was not until 187G that any pelagic sealer entered Bering 

 Sea, and that was a United States vessel that was captured and con- 

 fiscated by that Government. 



