34 ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 



Britain will either encourage or sustain her colonies in conduct which she herself 

 concedes to be wrong and which is detrimental to her own interests as well as to 

 ours. More than 10,000 people are engaged in London alone in the preparation of 

 seal skins. And it is understood that the British Government has requested that 

 clearances should not be issued in Canada for vessels employed in this business; but 

 the request has been disregarded. 



1 have, etc., E. J. Phelps. 



The learned Arbitrators will perceive that Mr. Phelps, at least, came 

 to the conclusion at this moment that the further progress of the nego- 

 tiation and any successful conclusion of it were impossible; and impos- 

 sible, in consequence of the intervention of Canada; and that any 

 assent to regulations which might be proposed, and which would be 

 effective for the i)urpose, would never be given by the Canadian Gov- 

 ernment. Whether he was right or wrong in that opinion upon his 

 part is not to my present purpose. It will perhaps be the subject .^f 

 future discussion ; but it is safe to conclude from the correspondence 

 that I have read to the Tribunal that the consummation of the negotia- 

 tion was arrested at this point — arrested by the intervention of Canada, 

 and I do not find anywhere in this correspondence any suggestion 

 on the part of Canada of another, or different, or modified, scheme 

 designed to ac('omi)lish the purpose of i^reserving the seals. I think 

 there is no evidence that Canada had ever submitted any proposition 

 of that sort. 



This brings us to the conclusion of what, I think, may properly 

 enough be called the first stage of this controversy. It is a stage 

 which embraces these leading features: the capture by the cruisers 

 of the United States of British vessels engaged in pelagic sealing; 

 the ol)jection and the protest of the British (jovernment, the ground 

 of objection being that it was an attempt to enforce a municii)al law of 

 the United States upon the high seas; an avoidance of any discussion 

 of that question by Mr. Bayard ; a suggestion by him that the case was 

 one of a peculiar property interest^ and a case for the exercise of an 

 exceptional marine jurisdiction; but that it would be wisest and best 

 to avoid a useless, and perhaps an irritating and abortive discussion, 

 upon the questions of right, if the attention of nations could be called 

 to the great fact that here was a useful race of animals, an important 

 blessing to mankind, threatened with extermination by certain prac- 

 tices, and that, therefore, it should be the duty, as it was certainly the 

 interest, of all nations to join pacifically in regulations designed to 

 prevent the mischief. 



It includes the further feature that negotiations were set on foot for 

 the purpose of carrying out these pacific intentions of the American 

 Minister; that they were received promptly in the most friendly man- 

 ner and in the same spirit by Lord Salisbury, British Secretary for For- 

 eign Affairs; that an agreement was substantially concluded between 

 those parties which would have been carried into effect but for the objec- 

 tion interposed by Canada, a dependency of the British empire, which 

 was most deeply interested in the carrying on of this pelagic sealing; 

 that, so far as ai)[)ears, no different scheme, no modified suggestion, 

 designed to carry out the same object was ever formulated by the Gov- 

 ernment of Canada, but that Canada remained in its condition of sim- 

 ple protest and objection to any scheme of i)rohibition such as had been 

 presented ; and the cessation, apparently final, of the negotiation in 

 consequence of that objection. 



