ORAL ARGUMENT OF FREDERICK R. COUDERT, ESQ. 295 



And I may add in this connection as an evidence of the kind feehng 

 of the British Commissioners, whose report, as I have said, is the most 

 important element in tlie British Case, that they have advanced— and 

 we must be grateful to them for the kindness which it evinced — an 

 argument why the United States sliould encourage pelagic sealing. 

 I am sure that the unaided ingenuity of the arbitrators, collective or 

 individual, would never inuigine what that advantage is; it is that by 

 encouraging pelagic sealing we will create for ourselves a nursery of 

 brave and hardy sailors! 1 do not believe that either Great Britain or 

 the United States needs that nursery. I think tlie instinct and the 

 ability on both sides for making good sailors to fight the world and 

 each other need not be encouraged by slauglitering female seals in the 

 Bering Sea. 



Against this injury, which the United States Government has made the subject of 

 vain remonstrance, there are absolutely no means of defense that can be made avail- 

 able within the limits of territorial jurisdiction. 



No fortifications can protect the young seal against the death of its 

 mother and consequent starvation. The three mile limit is no defence. 

 They are not slain within the three-mile limit. They go out for food 

 beyond twenty miles. 



As it is impossible, when seals are hunted in the water, that the sex can ever be 

 discriminated before the killing takes place, it follows that if what is called "pelagic 

 sealing" is allowed to be carried on, the enormous proportion of pregnant and suckling 

 females and of nursing young before referred to, must continue to be destroyed. 



Then comes the question of raids. The raid is an attack made under 

 cover of the night or of the fog by bolder and more exi)erienced men, 

 who are willing to take the chances of being shot — which chances the 

 British Commissioners suggest ought to be greater — men who are wil- 

 ling to invade a friendly territory, and in a night to get such a number 

 of seals as will justify the expenditure of the money invested, and com- 

 pensate them for the risk. So far as the raids are concerned the United 

 States asks no help from this high Tribunal, or from anyone else; but 

 you will bear in mind that when you arrest pelagic sealing, you also 

 dispose of the raids. The raiders are the men who hover around the 

 coasts, who come in, as I have said, under circumstances favorable to 

 their pursuit and having a right as they claim — a right which we deny — 

 to visit those waters for the purpose of hunting seals, take advantage 

 of every opportunity to come upon tlie shore and accomplish their mis- 

 sion of destruction. This, so far from being an argument against the 

 contention of the United States, is one of the very strongest arguments 

 that we can use against pelagic sealing. Raids are most destructive. 

 It was not pelagic sealing that destroyed the Southern seals. Why*? 

 Because it is so much easier and more profitable to go upon your neigh- 

 bor's land and to take his property there, than to scour the earth and 

 the sea in quest of something uncertain and undefined; and the only 

 reason why pelagic sealing was nuknown in those Southern seas is that 

 it was easier to go upon land where these animals were collected and to 

 slaughter them in masses. Whether the effect of the deci.^ion of this 

 high Tribunal may not be to save the seal all over the world is a ques- 

 tion which I need not discuss; but it is a comfort and a reflection to 

 believe that, in our advocacy of the rights of the United States and in 

 our denunciation of this cruel and barbarous method of pursuit, we are 

 perhaps the advocates of Great Britain as well as of the United States. 

 The question is a large one in every respect. It is one well worthy of 



