PROPERTY IN THE ALASKAN SEAL HERD. 93 



acknowledge the trust and have hitherto discharged it. Can anything 

 he clearer as a moral, and under natural laws, a legal obligation than 

 the duty of other nations to refrain from any action which will prevent 

 or impede the performance of that trust 1 ? The only office which belongs 

 to other natious is to see that this trust is duly performed. In this the 

 whole world has a direct interest. However much interference by one 

 nation in the affairs and conduct of another may be deprecated, it is not 

 to be denied that exigencies may arise, as they have arisen, in which 

 such interference may be defended. 1 



1 We have habitually referred to art, industry, and self-denial on the part of man 

 successfully practiced for the purpose of increasing the annual product of the earth 

 as being the main foundation upon which society awards a property interest. The 

 exercise of these qualities is enjoined by natural law, and nature always assigns to 

 an observance of her dictates its appropriate reward. That art and industry should 

 be thus rewarded is obvious, but the merit of self-denial or abstinence, is not so imme- 

 diately plain. It will be found, however, upon reflection, to possess the same meas- 

 ure of desert. 



In the case of the seals, for instance, the immediate temptation is to turn the wholo 

 mass to present account. Had this been done, the herds would long since have been 

 practically exterminated. Their present existence is the result of a policy of denial 

 of present enjoyment in the hope of a larger and more permaneut advantage. It is 

 quite unnecessary to enlarge upon the prodigious importance to mankind of such a 

 policy. Indeed, without it the race could not have emerged from barbarism. The 

 far-seals thus preserved are as truly the fruit of human industry and effort as any 

 of the products of the artisan. 



This merit of abstinence is the sole foundation upon which economists and moral- 

 ists place the right to capital, and interest for its use. Capital is the simply the fruit 

 of abstinence. The following citations are pertinent in this place: 



From N. W. Senior, Political Economy, 6th ed., London, 1872, p. 58 et seq. 



"But although human labour and the agency of nature, independently of that of 

 man, are the primary productive powers, they require the concurrence of a third pro- 

 ductive principle to give them complete efficiency. The most laborious population 

 inhabiting the most fertile territory, if they devoted all their labour to the produc- 

 tion of immediate results and consumed its produce as it arose, would soon find their 

 utmost exertions insufficient to produce even the mere necessaries of existence. 



"To the third principle or instrument of production, without which the two others 

 are inefficient, we shall give the name of abstinence, a term by which we express the 

 conduct of a person who either abstaius from the unproductive use of what he can 

 command, or designedly prefers the production of remote to that of immediate 

 results." 



After defining capital as " an article of wealth, the result of human exertion em- 

 ployed in the production or distribution of wealth," he goes on to say: "It is evi- 

 dent that capital thus defined is not a simple productive instrument. It is in most 

 cases the Jesuit of all the three productive instruments'combined. Some natural 

 agent must have afforded the material; some delay of enjoyment must in general 

 have reserved it from unproductive use, and some labour must in general Lave been 

 employed to prepare and preserve it. By the word abstinence we wish to express 

 that agent, distinct front labour and the agency of nature, the concurrence of which is nec- 

 essary to the existence of capital and which stands in the same relation to profit as labour 

 does to wages. We are aware that we employ the word abstinence in a more exten- 



