566 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



there was a general agreement that the sea, at least as far 

 as the range of guns from the coast, was accessory to the 

 land : no one doubted that this space at all events was included 

 within the territorial sea of the neighbouring country. Almost 

 all the writers went further, and held that the sovereignty 

 of a state was not confined to gunshot range, but could be 

 extended to a greater distance from the coast, either for 

 the security of the state or for jurisdiction, but there was 

 not agreement as to how far this could be carried. We 

 see, moreover, the growing tendency to assign a fixed dis- 

 tance as an alternative to cannon range or as a boundary 

 to neutral waters. Abreu, Valin, and Galiani placed it at 

 two leagues from the coast, and the same distance is given 

 by the writer of the article "Mer" in a great French work 

 published in 1777 l that is, twice the distance of cannon 

 range, which was said to be one marine league, or three 

 miles. 



Turning from the opinions of international jurists in the 

 eighteenth century to the practice and usage of nations in 

 the same period, we may note certain features of prominence : 

 (1) the continued decadence of claims to sovereignty over 

 extensive areas; (2) the growing custom of fixing definite 

 boundaries for special purposes by international treaties or 

 by municipal laws; (3) legal decisions by which the limit 

 of cannon range was recognised in certain cases. In the 

 eighteenth century claims to the sovereignty of seas became 

 greatly restricted and lost their previous importance. The 

 feebleness of Venice prevented her from asserting in prac- 

 tice the rights which were hers by law and ancient pre- 

 scription. Both Vattel and Azuni, while admitting that she 

 possessed a limited sovereignty, questioned whether any other 

 Power would recognise her claim to the whole of the Adriatic. 

 " Such pretensions to empire," says the former author, " are 

 respected so long as the nation that makes them is able 

 to assert them by force, but they vanish, of course, on the 

 decline of her power." In 1779, indeed, before Azuni wrote, 

 the Republic issued a decree respecting her neutrality, in 

 which the limit of cannon range was fixed as the boundary 

 of her waters for that purpose. 2 Her ancient dominion over 



1 Repertoire de Jurisprudence. 2 Seep. 571. 



