138 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



portanee to one of the parties; the law that would control it would be 

 the law that controls this case; for a nation has the same right to 

 defend one material interest, or one class of citizens, that it has to de- 

 fend all it possesses, and all the conditions of its existence. 



(2) The pursuit of the seals in the open sea, at the times and in the 

 manner complained of, leads to the early extermination of the whole 



herd. 



It is not necessary to the argument that this extreme result should 

 be made out. It would be enough to show that the interest in question 

 is seriously embarrassed and prejudiced, or its product materially re- 

 duced, even though it were not altogether destroyed. But the evidence 

 in the case, of which a large amount has been submitted, completely 

 establishes the fact that the herd has by these means been already 

 largely diminished, and that it must necessarily, if the same conduct 

 is continued, be at no distant day entirely annihilated. 



(3) The method of pursuit employed by the Canadian vessels, and 

 against which the United States Government protests, not only tends to 

 the rapid extermination of the seal, but is in itself barbarous, inhuman, 

 and wasteful. 



A very large proportion of the seals taken are females, either preg- 

 nant and about to give birth to their young, or engaged in suckling 

 their offspring, which, by the killing of the mothers, are left to perish in 

 great numbers by starvation. Some are in both these conditions at the 

 same time. And of those thus destroyed in the water, a considerable 

 share certainly, and probably a very large share, are lost to the hunter. 



The killing of female seals at any time is made criminal by the stat- 

 utes of the United States. (U. S. Revised Statutes, sec. 1961). 



The destruction during the breeding season of wild animals of any 

 kind which are in any respect useful to man, is prohibited, not only by 

 all the instincts of humanity, bat by the laws of every civilized coun- 

 try, and especially by the laws of the United States and of Great Brit- 

 ain. That protection, as will be more fully pointed out hereafter, has 

 long been and now is extended to the seals in every country in the 

 world where they are to be found. In no part of the world that is 

 within territorial jurisdiction could such conduct take place, without 

 exposing the perpetrator to criminal prosecution (see Case of the United 

 States, pp. 220-229). So that in order to justify it in this case, the sea 

 must be held to be free for acts which are not only destructive of the 

 valuable interests of an adjacent nation, but are forbidden everywhere 

 else by universal law. 



