206 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



done, and pelagic sealing were permitted to be prosecuted without let 

 or hindrance, the end would be reached nearly as soon. 



(4) The severity, amounting to injustice, in the operation of such a 

 scheme would be worth commenting upon, were it on other grounds ad- 

 missible. How would the sealer know, in that region of fog, whether 

 he was inside or outside of the prohibited line? The opportunities for 

 taking observations are rare. It maybe said that he should take good 

 care and give the line a wide inside berth. But laws should take no- 

 tice of the weakness of men in the face of temptation. This scheme 

 would be a lure to which many would yield, and find themselves caught, 

 even when they intended not to transgress. 



(5) The Commissioners of Great Britain have in their report studiously 

 avoided the real problem, which it was their business to solve. That 

 problem, according to their own view, was to devise some scheme of pe- 

 lagic sealing which would preserve that pursuit, and at the same time 

 not be fatally destructive to the land of seals. True, this is impossi- 

 ble; but it was not so in their view, if we may credit their confident 

 statements. They should, therefore, have first fixed upon some definite 

 number of females which might be taken annually without initiating 

 a gradual, but sure, destruction, and then devise a method which 

 should restrict the capture to this number. This is the method pursued 

 upon the Pribilof Islands. An estimate is made of the number of su- 

 perfluous males that may be safely taken, and the annual draft is 

 rigidly limited to that number. Had the Commissioners attempted this 

 task, the utter impossibility of it would have stood self-exposed. They 

 would have been immediately confronted with tivo refutations. In the 

 first place, had they named 50,000, or 40,000, or 20,001), or even 10,000, 

 females as a number which might be annually sacrificed without involv- 

 ing a sure destruction, the sure teachings of the natural laws governing 

 the increase of such animals would at once have rejected the proposal. 



Those laws tell us that no females must be taken. It is not from 

 that quarter that man may make his drafts in any degree. The condi- 

 tions are fir more rigidly exacting than in the case of domestic cattle. 

 There the opportunity for cultivation is unlimited. It may be prose- 

 cuted throughout the whole world, and an undue abundance be speed- 

 ily produced, it is often necessary there to Jcecp down the stock instead 

 of increasing it, and therefore females must necessarily be taken to 



