THE JURIDICAL CONTROVERSIES 347 



fishermen, and that in the beginning of 1608 negotiations 

 were on foot between the English Government and the Dutch 

 Ambassador as to the " assize-herring." 1 



It is important to note what many of his followers too often 

 forgot that Grotius restricts the application of his general 

 argument for mare liberum to the open sea. He does not, he 

 says, deal with an inland sea (mare interiore} which, sur- 

 rounded on all sides by land, did not exceed the breadth of 

 a river ; the question concerned the ocean, which the ancients 

 called immense, infinite, the parent of things, co-terminous 

 with the air. The controversy, he continues, was not about 

 a bay or a strait in this ocean, nor concerning so rnuck of 

 it as might be seen from the shore: the Portuguese claim 

 for themselves whatever lies between the two worlds. 2 Again, 

 referring to the Italian publicists, he says their opinion 

 cannot be applied to the matter in question, for they speak 

 of the Mediterranean, he of the ocean ; they of bays or 

 gulfs, he of the vast sea, which differ very much in respect 

 of occupation. 3 



The opinions and reasonings of Grotius in Mare Liberum 

 as to the free use of the sea were repeated more concisely 

 and with some modification in his greatest work, The Rights 

 of War and Peace, which was published in 1625. 4 No one, 

 he affirmed, can have property in the sea, either as to the 

 whole or its principal parts; and as some people admit this 

 in respect to private persons but not in regard to countries 

 or states, he proceeds to prove its truth by both a "moral 



1 Not improbably James had Mare Liberum in view in the following sentence in 

 his Proclamation of 1609 : " Finding that our connivance therein hath not only 

 given occasion of over great encroachment upon our regalities, or rather question- 

 ing for our right." That it was believed in England that Grotius had James in 

 view is shown by the following precis contained in the volume of official records 

 prepared for the ambassadors to the Congress at Cologne in 1673 : " K. James 

 coming in, the Dutch put out Mare Liberum, made as if aimed at mortifying the 

 Spaniards' usurpation in the W. and E. Indyes, but indeed at England. K. James 

 resents it, bids his Ambr S r D. Carleton complaine of it." State Papers, Dom., 

 cccxxxix. p. 99. Chas. II., 1673-75. 



2 Cap. v. p. 29. "In hoc autem Oceano non de sinu aut fretu, nee de omni 

 quidem eo quod e littore conspici potest controversia est. Vindicant sibi Lusitani 

 quicquid duos Orbes interjacet." 



3 Cap. vii. 



4 Hvgonie Grotii De Ivre Belli ac Pacis, Libri Tres. 



