ORAL ARGUMENT OF FREDERICK R. COUDERT, ESQ. 419 



gradual detenoratiou in tlie lierd has been taking place. Even if tliis 

 could be shown, it would form no justification for pelagic sealing and 

 would therefore be considered irrele^•ant. Suppose it were true; sup- 

 pose the United States had been reckless or had employed corrupt and 

 bad agents, the principle is admitted to be good. The property — I will 

 not say is conceded — but is proved to be theirs on the islands; and if 

 pelagic sealing is destructive, the fact that we must do our sealing on 

 the islands cannot be disputed. Suppose these seals to be under the 

 control of the United States at sea as well as on the islands. Would 

 it make any difference, and would anybody say that we had less right 

 to protect seals at sea because they were not treated properly on the 

 shore. 



There is no evidence, however — and I shall not pursue the subject in 

 my anxiety to close the argument to-day — to show that any bad results 

 followed upon the killing of a hundred thousand male seals prior to the 

 introduction of pelagic sealing; and that is the point upon which I 

 insist and to which I most strenuously call the attention of the court — 

 that there was no complaint, no loss, no difficulty, and that every tiling 

 went on prosperously and satisfactorily until tlie enormous depreciation 

 in the herd caused by pelagic sealing became manifest. 



This point has been treated carefully in the Counter Case of the 

 United States, and I will dismiss the subject by reading short extracts 

 from it. I read from the Counter Case of the United States, page 65. 



In establishiug their assertion tliat the number of seals auiiually killed on the 

 Islands was excessive, it is insisted by the United States that the Commissioners 

 should be confined to the first decade of the lease of the Pribilof Islands to the 

 Alaska Commercial Company (1871-1880), because pelagic sealing -was then too insig- 

 nificant to perceptibly aft'ect seal life, and that any consideration of the manage- 

 ment subsecjuent to the introduction of pelagic sealing, which is admitted to be a 

 factor "tending towards decrease" (Sec. 60), is irrelevant to the question at issue, 

 unless it can be shown that there was a sufficient increase in the number of seals 

 killed on the Islands, or sufficient changes in the methods employed in taking the 

 quota, to materially alfect and deplete the seal herd, even without the introduction 

 of pehigic sealing. 



There is no pretence of that. There is no pretence anywhere that if 

 it had not been for the introduction of pelagic sealing there would have 

 been such a decrease on the islands as to imperil the existence of the 

 herd. The British Commissioners themselves do not so jDretend. 



On page 67 : 



The United States, however, insist that the failure, if any, to take into account 

 the "new factor" (viz, pelagic sealing) is wholly irrelevant to the true issue, and 

 they have presented testimony in relation to the management on tiie Islands for the 

 pnr])ose of showing, and which shows, that such management could not, under 

 normal conditions, have caused a decrease in the Pribilof seal herd. 



The report fails to establish — and we assert this with great confidence — a single 

 instance, where the management on the Islands or the methods employed thereon 

 have been changed since 1880 from the "appropriate and even perfect" system 

 adopted in 1870, or where the number of seals killed annually has been increased 

 beyond the annual quota of the first ten years of the lease. 



I will read a few lines more and then submit this part of the case to 

 the court. I read from page 69 : 



The alleged excessive killing of male seals must rest entirely on the proposition, 

 which the Report endeavours to establish, that, by means of this license to slaughter 

 100,000 young males on the Islands, the breeding males have become so depleted as 

 to be unable to fertilize the females, thus creating a decrease in the birth rate 

 sufficient to account for the present condition of the Alaskan seal herd. To estab- 

 lish this, the Commissioners refer, among other things, to the report to the Treasury 

 Department in 1875 of Captain Charles Bryant. This official did, as stated in the 

 Report (Sec. 678), advise tlie Secretary of the Treasury, in view of his observations, 

 to reduce the number of the quota to 85,000 skins; but the true reason of this 



