DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 447 



and testimony, what is the complaint and claim of the Dominion? 

 It is that where they have made of the fishery a common property, 

 opened what they consider a valuable industry to the free use of 

 both countries, they are not met in the same spirit, and other indus- 

 tries, to them of equal or greater value, are not opened by us with 

 the same friendly liberality. I can find no answer to this complaint, 

 no reply to this demand, but that furnished by the British Case, 

 your own claim to receive a money compensation in the place of 

 what you think we ought to have given. If a money compensation 

 is recompense if these unequal advantages, as you call them, can be 

 equalized by a money payment, carefully, closely, but adequately 

 estimated then we have bought the right to the inshore fisheries, 

 and we can do what we will with our own. Then we owe no obliga- 

 tion to liberality of sentiment or community of interest ; then we are 

 bound to no moderation in the use of our privilege, and if purse- 

 seining and trawling and gurry-poison and eager competition destroy 

 your fishing, as you say they will, we have paid the damages before- 

 hand; and when at the end of twelve years we count the cost, and 

 find that we have paid exorbitantly for that which was profitless, do 

 you think we will be ready to renew the trade, and where and how 

 will we recover the loss? 



Extract from closing argument of Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr.) on 

 behalf of United States. 



Now, your honors will allow me a 1 word, and I hope you will not 

 think it out of place it is an interesting subject ; I do not think it is 

 quite out of place, and I will not be long about it on the nature of 

 this right which England claimed in 1818, to exclude us from the 

 three miles, by virtue of some supposed principle of international 

 law. I have stated my opinion upon it; but your honors will be 

 pleased to observe, that on that, as upon the subject of headlands, on 

 an essential part of it, without which it can never be put in execu- 

 tion, there is no fixed international law. I have taken pains to 

 study the subject ; have examined it carefully since I came here, and 

 I think I have examined most of the authorities. I do not find one 

 who pledges himself to the three-mile line. It is always " three 

 miles, or " the cannon-shot." Now, " the cannon-shot " is the more 

 scientific, though not the more practical, mode of determining the 

 question, because it was the length of the arm of the nation border- 

 ing upon the sea, and she could exercise her rights so far as the 

 length of her arm could be extended. That was the cannon-shot, and 

 that, at that time, was about three miles. It is now many more miles. 

 We soon began to find out that it would not do to rest it upon the 

 cannon-shot. It is best to have something certain. But international 

 writers have arrived at no further stage than this, to say that it is 

 " three miles, or the cannon-shot." When they are called upon to 

 determine what are the rights of bordering nations, they say, " to 

 the extent of three miles, or the cannon shot." But upon the question, 

 " How is the three-mile line to be determined ? " we find everything 



