WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 251 



care that nothing but good skins should leave the island, and in com- 

 bination with leaders of fashion abroad, the demand for the fur, by 

 this manipulation and management, has been wonderfully increased. 



Third. As matters now stand, the greatest and best interests of 

 the lessees are identical with those of the Government ; what in- 

 jures one instantly injures the other. In other words, both strive 

 to guard against anything that shall interfere with the preservation 

 of the seal-life in its original integrity, and both having it to their 

 interest, if possible, to increase that life ; if the lessees had it in 

 their power, which they certainly have not, to ruin these interests 

 by a few seasons of rapacity, they are so bonded and so environed 

 that prudence prevents it. 



Fourth. The frequent changes in the office of the Secretary of 

 the Treasury, who has very properly the absolute control of the 

 business as it stands, do not permit upon his part that close, 

 careful scrutiny which is exercised by the lessees, who, unlike him, 

 have but their one purpose to carry out. The character of the 

 leading men among them is enough to assure the public that the 

 business is in responsible hands, and in the care of persons who 

 will use every effort for its preservation and its perpetuation, as it 

 is so plainly their best end to serve. Another great obstacle to the 

 success of the business, if controlled entirely by the Government, 

 would be encountered in disposing of the skins after they had been 

 brought down from the islands. It would not do to sell them up 

 there to the highest bidder, since that would license the sailing of 

 a thousand ships to be present at the sale. The rattling of their 

 anchor-chains and the scraping of their keels upon the beaches of 

 the two little islands would alone drive every seal away and over to 

 the Russian grounds in a remarkably short space of time. The Gov- 

 ernment would therefore need to offer them at public auction in 

 this country : that would be simple history repeating itself the 

 Government would be at the mercy of any well-organized combi- 

 nation of buyers. Its agents conducting the sale could not count- 

 eract the effect of such a combination as can the agents of a private 

 corporation, who may look after their interest in all the markets of 

 the world in their own time and in their own way, according to the 

 exigencies of the season and the demand, and who are supplied 

 with money which they can use, without public scandal, in the 

 manipulation of the market. On this ground I feel confident in 

 stating that the Treasury of the United States receives more money, 



