234 PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION. 



Pearl fisheries of the two couiitries mentioned to defined areas of 



Australia. 



the open sea, of which the most remote points 

 are about two hundred and fifty miles from the 

 coast of Queensland, and about six hundred miles 

 from the coast of Western Australia. These acts 

 are, by their terms, limited in their operation to 

 British subjects, but as Sir George Baden-Powell 

 has pointed out, in a recent address delivered 

 before the Association of the Codification of the 

 Law of Nations,^ the remoteness of these waters 

 renders it practically impossible for foreign 

 vessels to participate in the pearl fisheries with- 

 out entering an Australian port, and thereby 

 rendering themselves amenable to Australian 

 law. 

 Frenciiiegisia- The fislicrv legislation of France also recoo"- 



tion. _ . . . . 



nizes the same principle. A commission, ap- 

 pointed by the French Government in 1849 to 

 investigate the fisheries of that country and 

 to make recommendations, reported that they 

 deemed it inexpedient to assign any precise 

 limit to territorial waters beyond which the laws 

 recommended should cease to be operative.^ 

 Accordingly the laws passed in pursuance of 

 this report were so framed as to leave this ques- 

 tion open, and the Decree of May 10, 1862. Sec. 2, 



' Delivererl at Liverpool, Aug. 29, 1890 ; see page 9. 

 * Rapport dft la Coiumissiou du 25iuiu, 1849, pour I'exaiiu'n d'nu 

 projet de loi sur la iieclie maritimo coticre, p. 25. 



