EIGHT TO PROTECT INTERESTS AND INDUSTRY. 175 



in wait for these animals on the adjacent sea during the season of re- 

 production, and to destroy the pregnant females on their way to the 

 islands, the nursing mothers after delivery while temporarily off 

 the islands in pursuit of food, and thereby the young left there to 

 starve after the mothers have been slaughtered; the unavoidable re- 

 sult being the extermination of the whole race, and the destruction of 

 the valuable interests therein of the United States Government and of 

 mankind; and the only object being the small, uncertain, and temporary 

 profits to be derived while the process of destruction lasts, by the indi- 

 viduals concerned. 



And it is this conduct, inhuman and barbarous beyond the power of 

 description, criminal by the laws of the United States and of every 

 civilized country so far as its municipal jurisdiction extends, m respect 

 to any wild animal useful to man or even ministering to his harmless 

 pleasure, that is insisted upon as a part of the sacred right of the freedom 

 of the sea, which no nation can repress or defend against, whatever its 

 necessity. Can anything be added to the statement of this proposition 

 that is necessary to its refutation? 



What precedent for it, ever tolerated by any nation of the earth, is 

 produced? From what writer, judge, jurist, or treaty is authority to 

 be derived for the assertion that the high sea is or ever has been free 

 for such conduct as this, or that any such construction was ever before 

 given to the term "freedom of the sea" as to throw it open to the 

 destruction, for the profit of individuals, of valuable national interests 

 of any description whatever ? Let those who claim to set up such a 

 right as justified by any known law of nations, produce the authority 

 or the precedent to establish it. 



If this proposal were submitted to the enlightened judgment of man- 

 kind, if the question of its acceptance were made to depend upon those 

 considerations of justice, morality, humanity, benevolence, and fair deal- 

 ing that, as we have seen, form the groundwork of international law, 

 and of all usages under it that have become established, it can not be 

 open to doubt what the answer to it must be. There can be but one 

 side to such an inquiry, if ideas of right and wrong, or even of sound 

 policy, are to prevail. To escape that result, some arbitrary and inflex- 

 ible rule of controlling law must be discovered, against which justice, 

 morality, and fair dealing are powerless. We deny that any such rule 

 forms a part, or can ever be permitted to form a part, of any recognized 

 system of international law. 



