ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 277 



Then, who is to carry out these Eegulations ? That must be done by 

 armed cruisers. Must the United States i'nrnish them. Nothing is 

 suggested to the contrary. If Great Britain is to take her share of the 

 expense, it would require a very considerable force of vessels. Not 

 one, not two, but half a dozen at least must be sent there by one, or 

 both, of the Governments for the purpose of enforcing these regula- 

 tions; and it would cost not 100,000, but jnany liuudreds of tliousands 

 of dollars — perhaps a million would be annually required to be expended 

 under this scheme in order to enforce these iirohibitions. 



And their enforcement would be most difticult, because the pelagic 

 sealer lias aright to be upon the sea; the vessel has a right to be there, 

 and it is the business of the Governments to keep it out of this pro- 

 tected area. Conjecture only can inform us of the cost that is to be 

 paid, not by the consumer, but by the Government; that is, by the 

 people of the two jjowers, and of course the expense would have to be 

 l^aid by taxation. Upwards of a million of dollars is to be expended, 

 and for whose benefits For the benefit of the United States'? fortlie 

 benefit of Great Britain? for the benefit of the consumers'? No; for 

 the benefit solely of the pelagic sealers; for the benefit of those engaged 

 in i^elngic sealing, and in order to enable them to carry on a destruc- 

 tive practice which will exterminate the seals in a few years ! It seems 

 to me that such a scheme is too preposterous for serious consideration. 



I have said that these Commissioners have sedulously avoided the 

 real problem before them, which was, to ascertain how many females 

 can be taken without working the destruction of the herd. That is the 

 sort of problem which has been solved upon the islands. The question 

 there has always been, how many young males can you take without 

 endangering the supply? They carry on the sealing on jirinciples 

 derived from very long experience, and they have come to the conclu- 

 sion that you can take 100,000 young males, but you must not go beyond. 

 A similar problem should have been solved by the Commissioners: how 

 many females can be taken*? If they had struggled with that question, 

 the fallacy of their own solution would have been apparent. In the 

 first place, they could not tell how many. Could they safely say that 

 even five thousand females could be taken without endangering the 

 destruction of the herd"? They could not say that even 5,000 might be 

 taken. From the evidence in the case, and as will be seen from the 

 careful and accurate examination by the American Commissioners, it 

 appears that 5,000 could not be taken. If you take 5,000 each year, 

 that number must be annually subtracted from a constantly diminish- 

 ing minuend, and the decrease progresses iu a ratio far morerajnd than 

 the arithmetical one. The destruction at first might perhaps be small, 

 but it would become proportionally greater and greater each year, until 

 it reached a figure at which its swiftly destructive effects would become 

 manifest. But suppose the Commissioners had concluded that 5,000, 

 or 20,000, might be taken ; they would have been confronted by another 

 difficulty equally insuperable. How could they limit the captures to 

 those figures? They could not limit the taking to males; there is no 

 method in pelagic sealing of making any distinction. How could they 

 tell when the cupidity of men was aroused by a large profit in the 

 market, that there might not be 100 vessels upon the seas, and that not 

 merely 60,000 females would be taken, but 100,000? That is perfectly 

 possible, and far more probable than any different result. 



One would su]ipose that in making these regulations they would have 

 paid some attention to their own conclusions, as stated in other parts 

 of their report. They have considered this question of taking females, 



