THE FUR-SEALS AND THE BERING SEA AWARD 41 



these regulations was left to the respective governments, with 

 the obligation of enacting each succeeding year such legisla- 

 tion as might be necessary to the proper enforcement of the 

 award. A recommendation was also made, in view of the 

 " critical condition to which it appears certain that the race 

 of fur-seals is now reduced," that the two governments 

 should agree to abstain from all killing of seals, either on sea 

 or on land, for a period of two or three years. ^This excel- 

 lent suggestion, to be acted upon only by the will of the two 

 powers, unfortunately was not accepted.^ 



Despite all adverse criticism, there can be no doubt that 

 the arbitrators, in thus framing a series of regulations for the 

 protection and preservation of the fur-seals, acted conscien- 

 tiously and to the best of their knowledge. In performing 

 their duty of establishing a code of laws for the protection of 

 the fur-seal species, the task of the commissioners was a pecu- 

 liarly difficult one, far more so indeed than had been the bur- 

 den of adjudicating upon the purely legal questions involved 

 in the controversy. The arbitrators were at once confronted 

 and overwhelmed with a hopeless mass of variable and con- 

 flicting testimony concerning every feature of seal life, and 

 as jurists their steps were uncertain in the provinces of natu- 

 ral science. They desire first and foremost to provide a 

 system of laws that should be effective in protecting the seals 

 from extermination, and they wished as well, in accordance 

 with the natural impulse of a judicial body, to place the 

 deprivations of enforced abandonment of a profitable indus- 

 try equally and equitably upon the subjects of both nations, 

 so far as proper and consistent with the primary and main 

 objects of the regulations. 



The award and regulations were accepted with becoming 

 grace by both countries. For a time murmurs of discontent 

 were heard from the Canadian sealers, who at first believed 

 that the restrictions on pelagic sealing would forever ruin 

 their industry. A certain amount of bitterness against the 

 award and the legal conclusion of the arbitrators was also 

 apparent for a season in many American newspapers, con- 

 tributed by those who could not recover too suddenly from 



