RIGHT TO PROTECT INTERESTS AND INDUSTRY. 171 



those countries outside the territorial limits of such jurisdiction. In 

 their strictly legal character as statutes, this is true. No authority need 

 have been produced on that point. But the distinction has already 

 been pointed out, which attends the operation of such enactments for 

 such purposes. Within the territory where they prevail, and upon its 

 subjects, they are binding as statutes, whether reasonable and neces- 

 sary or not. Without, they become defensive regulations, which if 

 they are reasonable and necessary for the defense of a national inter- 

 est or right, will be submitted to by other nations, and if not, may be 

 enforced by the government at its discretion. 



Otherwise their effect would be to exclude the citizens of the coun- 

 try in which they are enacted from a use of the marine products it is 

 seeking to defend, which is left open to the inhabitants of all other 

 countries, thus leaving those products to be destroyed, but excluding 

 their own people from sharing in the profits to be made out 

 of the destruction. Will it be contended that such is the result 

 that is either contemplated or allowed to take place by the govern- 

 ments which have found it necessary to adopt such restrictions? 



It would be much more to the purpose if it could be shown either 

 that any nation had ever protested against or challenged the validity 

 of any of these regulations outside the territorial line, or that any 

 individual had ever been permitted to transgress therewith impunity. 

 In the case of any of the statutes of Great Britain and her colonies 

 that have been referred to, if any enterprising poacher, armed with an 

 attorney and a battery of authorities on the subject of the extent of 

 statute jurisdiction, should attempt the extermination or even the 

 injury of the protected products, in defiance of the regulations pre- 

 scribed, he would speedily ascertain, without the assistance of an 

 international arbitration, that he had made a mistake, and that to 

 succeed in his undertaking he would need to be backed up by a fleet 

 too strong for Great Britain to resist. 



In the light of this accumulation of authority and precedent, drawn 

 from every source through which the sanction of international law can 

 be derived or the general assent of mankind expressed, what more 

 need be said in elucidation of the grounds upon which this branch of 

 the case of the United States reposes % Have we not clearly established 

 the proposition, that the dominion over the sea, once maintained by 

 maritime nations, has been surrendered only so far as to permit such 

 private use as is neither temporarily nor permanently injurious to the 



