ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 91 



the o4th or 50tli degree of iiortli latitude, claimed and asserted a sover- 

 eign right and dominion to the whole of the territories tlius discovered, 

 founded upou prior discovery. She followed up that assertion by the 

 establishment of these trading posts, one or more of them, on the 

 Alaskan shore of Bering Sea, several of them on the Northwest Coast, 

 south of the peninsula of Alaska, and more or less of them — I do not 

 know how many — upon the Siberian coast. Her title, therefore, was 

 based upou an undisputed prior discovery, and upou an undisputed 

 occupation, so far as those few establishments could give an occupation 

 of the whole region. Did they give a fair occupation of that whole 

 region? That is a question which it is proper to consider here. Was 

 this a reasonable assertion by her of dominion over that vast region? 

 Could she fairly claim to exclude other nations of the globe from a par- 

 ticipation in the benefits of that discovery on the ground of her prior 

 discovery, and the limited occupation which she had thus made? Was 

 that a fair and reasonable claim? Possession of everything must, of 

 course, correspond to the nature of the thing. If a nation had discov- 

 ered some very fruitful part of the globe, — theWest Indies, for instance, 

 the more southern x>arts of the United States, — and had attempted to 

 lay a claim to a thousand miles of the coast, ui)on the mere basis of an 

 occupation at one point, it might be deemed very unreasonable. Other 

 nations might come in, and say: "You are not fairly improving the dis- 

 covery you have made. Here is a coast capable of cultivation, capable 

 of extensive settlements, capable of supporting a numerous population, 

 capable of enormous production. You are not putting it to the uses 

 and j)urposes for which nature intended it; you are leaving it in a wild 

 and desolate condition; you are improving only a small portion of it; 

 and yet you assume to shut out the rest of mankind from the benefits 

 of it on the basis of that very small and limited occupation. That is 

 not just or right, and you shall not be permitted to do it." 



Assertions of that character were made at this time, and the justice 

 of them was quite apparent. How was it with this northern region? 

 It had, as I have already said, but one product, and that was these fur- 

 bearing animals. That one product was extremely limited, exhausti- 

 ble in its character, and could be fully reaped and gathered by one 

 nation. All that it was necessary to do to gather the product of this 

 enormous region was to establish a few trading posts, which should be 

 the centres of commercial establishments, and out from which vessels 

 could go along the coast, from time to time, to gather from the natives 

 the stores of skins they had collected. In that way the entire product 

 of this whole region could be reaped easily by one i>ower, and there was 

 not enough for more than one. 



The President. If you please, we will rise here, and resume the 

 hearing at 2 o'clock. 



[The Tribunal thereupon took a recess for an hour.] 



Mr. Carter. I was speaking, Mr. President, at the time the Tri- 

 bunal rose in reference to the nature of the occupation which it was 

 necessary that a nation should take in order to make good the title 

 founded upon first discovery of a new region. And I had said that 

 the nature of that occupation must depend ujion the nature of the 

 thing to be occupied, and that while acts of occupation in one quarter 

 of the globe might be sufficient to make good a title to but a very lim- 

 ited portion, in other x)ortions of the globe they might be sutficient to 

 make a title to a very considerable region of the earth, Now, I wish 

 to api)ly those views to this Bering Sea region, which was the great 

 theatre of Eussian enterx)rise, and to show, ux)on all the x^riucix^les rec- 



