208 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



grounds. The attempt to apply regulations in the nature of game laws 

 to the pursuit of such animals is a misdirected effort, founded upon a 

 disregard of their nature and habits. They are not like wild ducks, or 

 herring, or mackerel, animals over which man has no control, and which 

 reproduce themselves in prodigious numbers, and have abundant means 

 of eluding pursuit, and which can not be cultivated by art and industry ; 

 but a species exhibiting all the conditions r equisite to property, and 

 which must be treated accordingly. 



(7) This error is not imputable to ignorance on the part of the Com- 

 missioners. It docs not arise, from any failure to take notice of the 

 nature and habits of the animal. There is, indeed, in their report an 

 avoidance, which appears to be industrious, of any special inquiry into 

 the nature and habits of seals, with the view of ascertaining and report- 

 ing for the information of this Tribunal whether they really belong to 

 that class of animals which are the tit subjects of property, or that of 

 which ownership can not be predicated, and which can, consequently, 

 be protected against excessive sacrifice, only by the rough and ineffect- 

 ive expedient of game laws; but, nevertheless, they fully admit that 

 perfectly effective regulation of capture is easily possible at the 

 breeding places and there alone. They say: 



11<>. It is, moreover, equally clear from the known facts that efficient 

 protection is much more easily afforded on the breeding islands than at 

 sea The control of the number of seals killed on shore might easily 

 be made absolute, and as the area of the breeding islands is small, it 

 should not be difficult to completely safeguard these from raiding by 

 outsiders, and from other illegal acts. 1 



What is the avowed ground, aside from the assumed right of individ- 

 uals to carry on pelagic sealing, upon which these Commissioners felt 

 themselves not warranted in yielding to the decisive facts thus stated 

 by them, and de. •hiring that a perfect protection would be given to the 

 seals by simply prohibiting capture at sea? It is, to shortly sum it 

 up, that the power thus possessed by the occupants of the breeding 

 places has been abused in the past, and probably will be in the future, 

 by an excessive slaughter of young males. It is that the United States 

 put the property iuto the hands of lessees, and that, although the 

 leases are long ones, yet the lessees are so far barbarians, or chil- 

 dren, that they are incapable of comprehending their own interests, 



1 IJeport of 13r. Cum., p. 10. 



