CONCURRENT REGULATIONS. 207 



some extent; but with the seals the case is far otherwise. There are 

 but few possible places in which the animal may be cultivated, and the 

 march of destruction has greatly reduced these. They are wholly in- 

 sufficient to supply the demand even under the most careful and pru- 

 dent husbandry, and any taking whatever from breeding females is 

 plainly inadmissible. This is of itself an end of the question, for to say 

 that pelagic sealing must be limited to a catch of 10,000 (and, as we 

 have seen, in pelagic sealing the number of females killed equals the 

 whole number of both sexes actually recovered) is to prohibit it. The 

 game would no longer be worth the candle. It would not be pursued 

 under such conditions. In the next place, had the Commissioners fixed 

 upon any definite number, it would be absolutely impossible to frame 

 any scheme by which the slaughter could be limited to it. Their own 

 wretched device of a limitation of the pursuit in time and place, much 

 better calculated to increase than to restrict the slaughter, is, of course, 

 beneath attention. We do not refer to the inefficiency of their partic- 

 ular suggestions. There is an inherent impossibility which no inge- 

 nuity, combined with a supreme desire to accomplish the purpose, can 

 surmount. 



(6) The fundamental error of the Commissioners of Great Britain, as 

 of all who either deceive themselves, or attempt to deceive others, with 

 the illusion that it is possible to permit in any degree the indiscriminate 

 pursuit of a species of animals like the seals, so eagerly sought, so slow 

 in increase and so defenseless against attack, and at the same time to 

 preserve the race, consists in assuming that the teachings of nature 

 can be replaced by the cheap devices of man. The first and only busi- 

 ness of those who, like the Commissioners, were charged with the duty 

 of ascertaining and declaring what measures were necessary for the 

 preservation of this animal was to calmly inquire what the laws of 

 nature were, and conform to them unhesitatingly. It would then have 

 been seen by them that no capture whatever of such animals should be 

 allowed except capture regulated in conformity with natural laws: and 

 that all unregulated capture was necessarily destructive, and a crime; 

 that there could be regulated capture upon the land, and upon the land 

 alone, and that all attempts to regulate capture on the sea must neces- 

 sarily be abortive; that, consequently, the only regulation to be made 

 in respect to pelagic sealing was to prohibit it altogether, which is tan- 

 tamount to the award of property to the proprietors of the breeding 



