GENERAL ADOPTION OF THE THREE-MILE LIMIT 593 



It is evident from the foregoing that the territorial sea that 

 may be claimed as belonging to this country is not restricted 

 to a distance of three miles from the shore on an open coast, 

 though a certain jurisdiction and certain rights may be confined 

 to that distance by municipal law or international agreement. 

 The determination of the extent is left to the law of nations, 

 and there is but little doubt that by the law of nations the 

 true principle of delimitation is the actual range of guns from 

 the coast, where the coast is washed by the open sea. It is to 

 be noted that in the Territorial Waters Jurisdiction Act nothing 

 is said about bays: criminal jurisdiction is confined to "the 

 open sea" within one marine league of the coast. Offences 

 such as come under the Act may obviously be committed as 

 well in territorial bays and arms of the sea as within the three- 

 mile limit on the open coast ; and the omission to include bays 

 was no doubt deliberate, bays in England being left under the 

 common law on the principle previously explained, the range 

 of vision, and in Scotland presumably under Scots law i.e., 

 "within land" (see pp. 545, 547). 



Other Acts of Parliament which fix limits of jurisdiction 

 beyond three miles from the shore include those relating to 

 smuggling, the public health, and slave-ships. In 1736, and 

 later, statutes were made by Parliament, known as the Hover- 

 ing Acts, by which vessels with certain cargoes on board, 

 destined for British ports, might be seized within four leagues 

 of the British coast; and foreign vessels so taken have been 

 brought for adjudication before British courts and forfeited 

 for illicit trade. 1 By later Acts concerning the customs, differ- 

 ential limits were fixed with respect to jurisdiction over vessels 

 having dutiable goods on board. Those belonging wholly or 

 in part to British subjects, or having half the persons on board 

 British subjects, found or discovered to have been within four 



always said that the distance a gun could fire to was three miles. How far this 

 principle was to be extended, and whether it was to be extended indefinitely, was 

 a question for consideration, and it was a question which would not be without its 

 difficulty." Lord Salisbury referred to a gun which was fired on Jubilee Day 

 and carried twelve miles, and Lord Herschell to one which had a range of thirteen 

 miles. 



1 9 Geo. II., c. 35 ; 24 Geo. III., c. 47 ; Twiss, The Law of Nations in Time of 

 Peace, 261 ; Hall, A Treatise on the Foreign Powers and Jurisdiction of the British 

 Crown, 244. 



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