176 American Fisheries Society 



of the Ligurian Sea. It is interesting to note under the Treaty 

 of Paris, 1763, it is specified that French fishermen shall have the 

 liberty of fishing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on condition that they 

 do not come within a limit of nine geographical miles of the coast, 

 nor nearer Cape Breton Island than 45 miles. The large claim of 

 Great Britain to exclusive authority over the waters all around 

 her shores, and extending in the North Sea to France and to 

 Norway, was considerably interfered with by various Royal and 

 Parliamentary Concessions. Indeed, up to 1851 the fishermen 

 of Belgium had the right to fish within three miles of the British 

 shores under a charter of Charles II, and the French fishermen 

 also claimed privileges, which up to then, the Dutch fishermen 

 had solely enjoyed. These concessions were of so uncertain a 

 character that the British Government admitted until 1851 that 

 the foreign fishermen referred to, might continue to fish within 

 territorial limits if they proved to the satisfaction of the English 

 Courts the validity of their claim. As M. Luis Maria Drago stated 

 at The Hague Tribunal in 1910, in the coastal waters a century 

 or two ago (when the doctrine of Selden's "Mare Clausum" was 

 at its height), distances were fixed by various nations up to 60 

 miles, 100 miles, or a two days' journey from the shore, and the 

 like. There was the utmost diversity and contradiction in the 

 regulations which it was attempted to enforce in various seas. 

 Indeed, the principle of "land kenning," i. e., claiming as much 

 water as was covered by the distance land was visible from a ship 

 at sea, had been adopted before the time of Grotius. 



INTERNATIONAL THREE-MILE LIMIT INVALID. 



It is an error, therefore, to claim, as has been very generally 

 claimed, that a three-mile limit is an ancient accepted rule, 

 universally recognized and admitted down to our own time. 

 If it be asserted that such a limit is a canon of international law 

 we are driven to ask, "What is international law?" about which 

 so much has been said and written. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW IS REALLY INTERNATIONAL MORALITY. 



It is true that quite an extensive legal literature has grown 

 up since the time of Grotius (1625), and other less known jurists, 

 who gave definiteness to the general tendency of civilized nations 



