EIGHT TO PEOTECT INTEEESTS AND 1NDUSTEY. 147 



often prove inadequate or inapplicable. On the contrary, as will be 

 seen hereafter, many nations have been compelled to assert, and have 

 successfully asserted, much wider and larger powers in the defence of 

 their manifold interests. 



It is under the operation of the same principle on which jurisdiction 

 is awarded to nations over the sea within the 3-mile or cannon-shot 

 limit, that a similar jurisdiction is allowed to be exercised not only 

 over navigable rivers, bays, and estuaries, which may be fairly re- 

 garded as lying within territorial boundaries, but over those larger 

 portions of the ocean comprised within lines drawn between distant 

 promontories or headlands, and often extending much more than three 

 miles from the nearest coast. Such waters were formerly known in 

 English law as "the King's Chambers." 1 



Chancellor Kent remarks on this subject (1 Com., pp. 30, 31): 



Considering the great extent of the line of the American coasts, we 

 have a right to claim for fiscal and deiensive regulations a liberal ex- 

 tension of maritime jurisdiction; and it would not be unreasonable, as 

 I apprehend, to assume, for domesticpurposes connected with our safety 

 and welfare, the control of the waters on our coasts, though included 

 within lines stretching from quite distant headlands, as for instance, 

 from Cape Ann to Cape Cod, and from Nantucket to Montauk Point, 

 and from that point to the capes of the Delaware, and from the south 

 cape of Florida to the Mississippi. 



The principle on which this exercise of maritime jurisdiction reposes 

 is only that of self-defense. As Chancellor Kent further observes (1 

 Com., p. 26) : 



Navigable rivers which flow through a territory, and the seacoast ad- 

 joining it * * * belong to the sovereign of the adjoining ter- 

 ritory, as being necessary to the safety of the nation and to the undis- 

 turbed use of the neighboring shores. 



That the right of self-defence is not limited by any physical boundary, 

 but may be exerted wherever and whenever necessity requires it, upon 

 the high sea or even upon foreign territory, is not only the inevitable 

 result of the application of just principles, but is established by the 

 highest authorities in the law of nations. 



1 Sir Henry Maine says (Lectures on International Law, p. 80) : "Another survival 

 of larger pretensions is the English claim to exclusive authority over what were 

 called the King's Chambers. Theso are portions of the sea cut off by lines drawn 

 from one promontory of our coast to another, as from Lands End to Milford Haven. 

 The claim has been followed in America, and a, jurisdiction of the like kind is as- 

 serted by the United States over Delaware Bay and other estuaries which enter into 

 portions of their territory." 



