190 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



FOURTH. 



CONCURRENT REGULATIONS. 



The five questions which, in the order adopted by the Treaty, are 

 first submitted to the Tribunal of Arbitration, may for practical pur- 

 poses be reduced to two; and these present for consideration the two 

 general grounds upon which, in the contemplation of the Treaty, the 

 United States might assert a right to prevent the pursuit and capture 

 of the Alaskan fur-seals on the high seas. The first is the possession 

 by the United States of a jurisdiction or right to exercise authority in 

 Bering Sea sufficient to enable it to protect their sealing industries 

 against injury from the prosecution of pelagic sealing by the vessels of 

 any nation. The second is the property right or interest in the seal herd, 

 or in the industry of cherishing and cultivating that herd on the 

 Pribilof Islands, and taking the annual increase for the purpose of 

 supplying the world's demand. The treaty apparently assumes that 

 a determination in favor of the United States of the question of juris- 

 diction in Bering Sea might amount to a final disposition of the whole 

 substance of the controversy; but it is cautious in this particular, and, 

 having in view the extreme importance of preserving the seals from 

 threatened extermination, contemplates that even in the event of such 

 favorable decision the United States might not be able, by any exer- 

 cise of the powers thus conceded to them, to insure this preservation; 

 but that regulations to be adopted by the concurrent action of both 

 nations might be necessary; and this contemplated possibility is not, in 

 the view of the Treaty, displaced by any determination which may be 

 reached upon the question of property. 



The seventh article, therefore, broadly provides that: 



If the determination of the foregoing questions as to the exclusive 

 jurisdiction of the United States shall leave the subject in such posi- 

 tion '.that the concurrence of Great Britain is necessary to the estab- 

 lishment of regulations for the proper protection and preservation of 

 the fur-seal in or habitually resorting to the Bearing Sea. the arbitrators 

 shall then determine what concurrent regulations outside the jurisdic- 

 tional limits of the respective governments are necessary, and over 

 what waters such regulations should extend, etc., etc. 



