possessed to the purposes for which nature and nature's God intended them; they were not faithful to the trust which was imposed upon them; they were incapable of discharging to mankind the duties which the possessors of such blessings ought to discharge. * What did England do in the case of China in 1840, for instance? She made war upon China and subdued her. Why? The real cause of war is not always correctly stated in the pretext given for it, and in that instance the pretext was, I believe, some discourtesy which had been shown to individuals, some maltreatment of British officials. But if we look into the history of the matter, we find that the dispute began when China closed her ports, and that it terminated with the treaty by which she bound herself to keep them open. This war was defensible; I do not put it as an offense on the part of Great Britain. * "Take the case of Peruvian bark. This product is commonly regarded as absolutely necessary in the economy of society; it is a necessity for the cure of certain diseases; it is a specific for them; they will rage unrestrained unless you have Peruvian bark. Now, suppose the countries where it is grown should say that for some reason or other they will not carry on commerce; and not only that, but that they propose to devastate the plantations where the bark is cultivated-is mankind going to permit that? Why is Great Britain in Egypt maintaining a control over the destiny of that nation? What reason has she for asserting a dominion over these poor Egyptians? Is it because they are weak and defenseless? Is that the only reason? No; I suppose that those who have the destinies of Great Britain in their charge can make out a better case than that. Egypt is the pathway of a mighty commerce; it is necessary that that commerce should be free and unrestrained--that great avenue and highway of traffic must be made to yield the utmost benefit of which it is capable. If the government of Egypt is not capable of making it yield its utmost-if that government is incapable of doing so, other nations have a right to interfere and see that the trust is performed. "The PRESIDENT. I am afraid that you take a very high point of view, Mr. Carter, because you seem to anticipate the judgments of history. I can not say more at present. "Mr. CARTER. Not a higher view than is sustained by the practice of mankind for three hundred years." Seals and Certain Mr. Carter drew a distinction between herds Difference Between of fur seals and polygamous domestic animals, such as horses, cattle, or fowls, on the ground that the latter can be produced almost anywhere and are capable of indefinite increase, while in the case of the seals the places where they could be produced are so few and the demand so far exceeds the supply that the great object is "not only to preserve the present normal number, but to increase it." To do this there was, he declared, "no way except by saving all the females." Having drawn this distinction, he then proceeded to speak of "the difference between the seals and wild animals, such as birds of the air, wild ducks, fishes of the sea, mackerel, herring, and all those fishes which constitute food for man and upon which he makes prodigious attacks." In respect of such animals man can not, he said, confine himself to the annual increase; he can not separate it from the stock nor tell male from female. Hence he "can not practice any kind of husbandry" in respect of such animals. Continuing, Mr. Carter said: "And here it will be observed how nature seems to take notice of the impotence of man and furnishes means of perpetuating the species of the wild animals last mentioned. Take the herring, the mackerel, the cod; they do not produce one only at a birth, but a million! They produce enough not only to supply all the wants of man, but the wants of other races of fishes that feed upon them. There is another mode designed by nature for their preservation, and that is the facility which she gives them to escape capture. Man lays hold of some of them which come within his range, but the great body of them never come there. With the seals it is otherwise. They have no defense. They are obliged to spend five months of the year on the land where man can slaughter them; and even at sea they can not escape him, as the evidence clearly proves. * "Marquis VISCONTI-VENOSTA. Do you know any other animals besides the seal that are situate in like conditions? "Mr. CARTER. None under precisely the same conditions. I hear my learned friend whisper 'sea otter,' but you can not practice any sort of husbandry with the sea otter. It never places itself like the seal under the power of man. * "The PRESIDENT. You will not put the sea otter on the same legal footing as you do the fur seal? "Mr. CARTER. No. So far as I am aware, man has no sure means of preserving the sea otter, for it seems to me that he has exterminated it almost altogether. Then take the case of the canvas-back duck, a bird which abounded in America. As long as man made but a slight attack upon its numbers-fifty years ago, when there were no railroads and when the means of transporting it were quite imperfect-this bird was found in great plenty, but the abundance was confined to the locality where it was found. But now it can be transported five thou sand miles without injury, and the whole world makes an attack upon it. The law may protect it a little, but it can not protect it altogether from the cupidity of man; and this creature, too, is fast disappearing. "In other words, these birds have all the characteristics of wild animals, and none of the characteristics of tame animals. You can not practice any husbandry in regard to them. No man and no nation can say to the rest of the world that he has a mode of dealing with them which will enable him to take the annual increase without destroying the stock. When a more accurate knowledge is had of the habits of fishes it may come to be ascertained that the inhabitants of some shores can protect some races of fishes which resort to that shore, provided other persons are required to keep their hands off. "The PRESIDENT. And that would give a right of appropriation, in your view? "Mr. CARTER. Yes; that would tend that way. If they could furnish the protection and no one else could. That would be the tendency of my argument. I am glad to see that the learned president catches it. "The consequence of the proved facts is that the fur seal can not maintain itself against unrestricted human attack." tion and the Laws of the United States. After Mr. Carter had made the distinction The Duty of Protec- between seals and certain wild animals not the subject property, on the ground of the impossibility of exercising a husbandry in respect of the latter, a question arose as to the extent of the right and duty of protection claimed for the United States in respect of the fur seals. In this relation the following dialogue occurred: "The PRESIDENT. Mr. Carter, may I ask you a question? "Mr. CARTER. Certainly: * "The PRESIDENT. * * * My question is, Does the American Company contend, as I understand you to contend, that the owners, whoever they be, of the Pribilof herd, have a right of property or protection in these animals, wherever they be; and if they have the right of property and protection, have they a legal right as well as moral right to complain of the United States not punishing pelagic sealing anywhere else, wherever the seals may go; for if I understand your purport they have a right of property or protection anywhere-not only in Alaskan waters. "Mr. CARTER. I agree to your suggestion that the lessees of these islands would have a moral right. "The PRESIDENT. No; I ask you whether they have a legal right? "Mr. CARTER. Not quite a legal right, perhaps, because at the time when their lease was executed and their rights were acquired it might be said to be the fair interpretation of that document that they took their right to the fur seals subject to the existing condition of things and that if there was any failure on the part of the United States to repress pelagic sealing they took it subject to that failure. "The PRESIDENT. I wanted to make the distinction clear. "Mr. CARTER. Yes; I apprehend. If these islands were not in the possession of the United States Government, but were in the possession of private individuals, I think there would be a moral right on the part of those individuals to call upon the United States Government to exercise its powers on the high seas to prevent the destruction of those seals. "The PRESIDENT. That is what the United States demand from us to day! "Mr. CARTER. It is what the United States demand from you to-day. It is what I am now endeavoring to show to this Tribunal. I am taking one step, and that is to say that the United States has a right of property here. My next step will be that having that right of property, they have a right to go there with force and protect it, and my next step will be that if they have not the right to go there with force and protect it, you ought to pass some regulation giving them that right. "The PRESIDENT. Then they do not protect their own property, as yet, against the pelagic sealing. "Mr. CARTER. They do not protect their own property as yet, for the reason that they do not want to disturb the peace of the world. "The PRESIDENT. Would it disturb the peace of the world if they were to act against their own citizens engaged in pelagic sealing? "Mr. CARTER. No; not at all; and we continue to act against our own citizens. "The PRESIDENT. No, you do not do that. You do not act against your own citizens everywhere. "Mr. CARTER. So far as our laws go. "The PRESIDENT. I say your laws do not go as far as your contention. "Mr. CARTER. No; the laws do not go as far as our contention goes. The Congress of the United States is a different body from the executive department of the United States. The executive department of the United States submits questions of law, takes its position, here. I am here for the purpose of arguing them. Perhaps the Congress of the United States may not have gone through all the processes of reasoning which I have gone through. * "The PRESIDENT. You want to convince us first and the American Congress afterwards, while you ought to convince the American Congress first and us afterwards. That is what I mean. It is merely a point in my mind. "Mr. CARTER. That the American Congress, after this tribunal shall have established American rights, will hesitate at all in exercising the utmost degree of protection is scarcely to be apprehended. "The PRESIDENT. But it might have been in argument before us that the American Congress had already admitted the right. "Senator MORGAN. You will remember that Lord Salisbury, I think, or Lord Rosebery, in discussing the modus vivendi which is now governing this matter, made the objection that the British Government and the American Government would be tying their hands by agreeing upon the prohibition of pelagic sealing during the pendency of this litigation, and permitting other nations to come in and take the seals at their will. Both governments had to take the risk of it. "Mr. CARTER. Yes; that is undoubtedly true. But still the observation of the president is correct, namely, that if the United States had a property in these seals and a right to protect them upon its own possessions, it could at all times have prevented its own citizens from taking seals even in the northern Pacific Ocean. It could have done that. It has not done it; and so far as that is an argument bearing upon the merits of this question of property, I must allow it to pass unanswered; but as to the force and weight of it, I must be permitted to say that it does not seem to be very significant. "The PRESIDENT. It merely shows the question is a delicate and disputed one. "Mr. CARTER. The policy of passing laws of that character, the direct operation of which would be-allowing that these pelagic sealers were mere marauders-to restrain your own marauders for the benefit of the marauders of another nation, is not a very obvious one." The Rights of the the Question of As against the rights claimed by the United States in respect of the fur seals, Mr. Carter contended that there was no other right that could be set up. It was, he said, as nearly as he could ascertain, "asserted to be a right to pursue the animal because it is a free swimming animal, in the first place, and because, in the next place, there is no power on the sea to prevent it." This did not, he declared, suggest a principle of right at all. Why should anyone "be permitted to destroy a useful race of animals, a blessing of mankind, because they happen to move freely in the sea?” And as for the argument of a lack of power to interfere with pelagic sealers on the high seas, it seemed "to involve the solecism that there may be a right to do a wrong upon the sea!" To destroy "a useful race of animals" was "a crime against nature," which, "if it were committed within the boundaries of any civilized and Christian state, would be punished as a crime by municipal law." Continuing, he said: "Nature has so ordered it that any pursuit or occupation like this which consists simply in destroying one of the blessings of Providence, does no good, and nothing but evil, in any direction. We say we, the United States, can take the entire |