Congressional Edition Volume 3166, No. 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ...States that its agents or licensees can treat them in many ways as if they were domestic animals; that all that is needed to enrmre their return to and remaining upon those islands from year to year, whereby the benefits of an increase of their numbers can be obtained, is that such agents and lessees shall abstain from repelling them as they approach the land, defend them after they have arrived against pursuit by hunters, disturb them as little as possible when making selections for commercial purposes, and take males only for purposes of commerce; and That the United States, its agents and lessees, do all that is necessary to secure their return each year to, and their remaining at, the Pribilof Islands for all the purposes for which they must come to, and for a time abide, upon land. These considerations, it is contended--assuming that these fur seals areof the class commonly called animals fercenaturce--rest uponaprinciplefundamental in the institution of property, that principle beingthat whenever any useful wild animals, the supply of which may be exhausted by indiscriminate slaughter, or by reckless handling, "so far submit themselves to the control or dominion of particular men as to enable them exclusively to cultivate such animals and to obtain the annual increase for the supply of human wants, and, at the same time, to preserve the stock, they have a property in them; or, in other words, whatever may be justly regarded as the product of human art, industry, and self-denial, must be assigned to those who make these exertions, as their merited reward." In opposition to this claim of property by the United States, Great Britain contends that these seals are strictly animals ferwnaturw; that the only property in them...