690 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 





fairly taken as representing the latest views of European 

 publicists. 



With regard to the question of the limits of the territorial 

 sea, it was very generally held that a distinction should be 

 drawn between various sovereign rights, as the right of fishery 

 and the rights of neutrals during war. The two limits com- 

 monly recognised namely, cannon range and three miles from 

 low-water mark were no longer identical. Three miles was 

 now too small a distance for safeguarding the coasts of a 

 neutral from the projectiles of belligerents, and the range of 

 modern artillery fluctuated, and was besides considered to be 

 too great a distance for the exercise of exclusive rights of 

 sovereignty. Sir Thomas Barclay's proposal was therefore to 

 reaffirm the limit of cannon range as the public law of Europe, 

 but to confine its application to the right of the neutral as 

 founded in reason, and to establish another and a lesser bound- 

 ary for the exercise of the exclusive sovereign rights of the 

 neighbouring state. The former limit was a " zone of respect " ; 

 the latter bounded the true territorial sea. There was general 

 agreement that the neutral line or zone of respect should coin- 

 cide with the actual range of guns ; but some were of opinion 

 that the range should be considered not from the coast, on the 

 principle of Bynkershoek, but from the sea, and others that 

 the neutral zone should be measured from the boundary of the 

 true territorial sea, in order to prevent violation of the latter 

 by the bullets of belligerents. Since the range of guns, how- 

 ever, is uncertain and variable, and the line of respect must 

 necessarily vary with it, it was decided finally not to adopt a 

 fixed distance, but to recommend that in case of war the neutral 

 state, taking the range of guns as the basis, should itself fix 

 and declare the extent of its neutral waters beyond the limit 

 of the territorial sea. 



There was not the same agreement as to the limit which 

 should be recommended as the boundary of the territorial sea, 

 within which the rights of the state are much more complex, 

 and of which the extent should be precisely fixed. The histor- 

 ical principle of demarcation the range of cannon having 

 been transferred to the line of respect, the only other limit in 

 common use was the three-mile limit, and this was the distance 

 at first proposed by Sir Thomas Barclay in the draft rules,. 



