ORAL ARGUMENT OP JAMKS C. CARTER, ESQ. 55 



suppose it to be an indefensible wrong; tbat does not give the United 

 States any right to arrest a vessel engaged in the practice. Why? 

 Because it is in time of peace; that is to say, the proposition of Lord 

 Salisbnry is that, in time of peace, no matter what injury an indefensi- 

 ble act of wrong by the citizens of a foreign i)ower may intlict upon the 

 United States Government, or its citizens, no vessel engaged in the 

 infliction of that wrong can be arrested and detained when she is upon 

 the high seas. I am Jiot going to argue that question now; but I will 

 say that he makes a pretty happy use of the argument ad hominem; 

 and he cites from an American President, John Tyler, a pretty square 

 recognition of that doctrine in a special message communicated to Con- 

 gress in reference, as I assume from the date, to negotiations concern- 

 ing the suppression of the slave trade. I am now reading from page 

 208 of the Appendix. President Tyler says: 



"With this single exception (that of piracy,) no nation has in time of 

 peace any authority to detain the ships of another on the high seas on 

 any pretext whatever outside of the territorial jurisdiction." 



President Tyler was an American in high official position; but his 

 authority is not binding here, unless it expresses the truth; and this 

 position taken by him we shall show at another stage in the debate to 

 benvliolly without foundation. Lord Salisbury must at the time have 

 failed to bear in mind the circumstance that there had been for a cen- 

 tury on the statute books of his own nation laws against "hovering" 

 and laws in relation to quarantine, prescribing rules and regulations 

 puri)orting to bind foreign vessels as well as national vessels, a viola- 

 tion of which upon the high seas, according to the British statutes, 

 would be followed by arrest and condemnation. There are many other 

 instances which we shall hereafter refer to in the argument. This is a 

 very brief suggestion in answer to Mr. Blaine and it does not seem to 

 be very satisfactory. I might add further upon the merits of the case, 

 that the ground is that even if pelagic sealing were contra honos mores 

 it does not amount to piracy. If it did, any Government might sup- 

 press it, and suppress it upon the high seas: but, it is insisted, because 

 it does not amount to piracy none can. Why can any Government 

 suppress piracy upon the high seas? Because it is wrong; because it 

 is an indefensible wrong, and a wrong against all nations; and so great 

 a wrong that by a tacit agreement every j^ower is permitted to take 

 measures to suppress it. 1 cannot perceive the force of the argument 

 which is based upon a supposed distinction between wrongs against 

 nations. If wrongs against all nations may be suppressed by all nations, 

 one wrong may be suppressed as well as another, and certainly when 

 the commission of the wrong hap])ens to work especial injury to the 

 interest of a particular state, that state may suppress it. 



Lord Salisbury, in coming to the other branch of the aigument of Mr. 

 Blaine, as he states it, namely, that the practice is contra honos mores, 

 makes his answer very brief, and it amounts to this: 



"TnTo, it is not contra honos mores, because nations have never agreed 

 that it was contra honos mores. They have agreed that piracy was such'; 

 they have agreed, in part, that the slave trade was snch; but they 

 never have agreed that ijelagic sealing was contra honos mores''''! 



Is it true that whether a thing is right or wrong, whether a thing is 

 contra honos mores, or not, depends upon the circumstance whether 

 nations have come together and agreed that it is so? I had supposed 

 that the distinctions between right and wrong were deeper by far than 

 that. I had supposed too that neither piracy, nor the slave trade, 

 would ever have been by agreement between nations regarded as wrong, 



