1054 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



"five marine miles from the shore belonging to the said neutral 

 Power on the American seas." 



This provision for maritime jurisdiction of 5 marine miles, was 

 recognised as an extension of the customary maritime jurisdiction, as 

 is shown by article 19 of the treaty. 



By the terms of this article 19, it was agreed between the parties 

 that the rule of international law thus recognised by the two Powers 

 confined maritime jurisdiction to a cannon-shot from the shore, and 

 the cannon-shot rule was, by the terms of the treaty, identified with 

 the 3-mile rule, 'which was later inserted in the treaty of 1818. 



Later in the discussion of the negotiations leading up to the treaty 

 of 1818, the fact will be referred to that the words "coast" and 

 "shore" were used in this treaty of 1806 as synonymous; and I shall 

 not have to call attention to that fact again. When that point is 

 reached in the argument, the fact can be referred to without recurring 

 to this treaty of 1806 again. 



This convention of 1806 between Great Britain and the United 

 States was negotiated by Commissioners who were definitely in- 

 structed by their respective Governments. Mr. Madison, subse- 

 quently President of the United States, then Secretary of State, in a 

 note to James Monroe, who was then Minister for the United States 

 in Great Britain and one of the Commissioners for the United States 

 and who was also later President of the United States stated, as will 

 appear in the Appendix to the British Case on p. 58 : 



"The time has been, indeed, when England not only claimed but 

 exercised pretensions scarcely inferior to full sovereignty over the 

 seas surrounding the British Isles, and even as far as Cape Finisterre 

 to the south, and Van Staten in Norway to the north. It was a time, 

 however, when reason had little share in determining the law, and the 

 intercourse of nations, when power alone decided questions of rights, 

 and when the ignorance and want of concert among other maritime 

 countries facilitated such an usurpation. 



"The progress of civilisation and information has produced a 

 change in all those respects ; and no principle in the code of public 

 law is at present better established than the common freedom of the 

 seas beyond a very limited distance from the territories washed by 

 them. This distance is not, indeed, fixed with absolute precision. It 

 is varied in a small degree by written authorities, and perhaps it may 

 be reasonably varied in some degree by local peculiarities. But the 

 greatest distance which would now be listened to anywhere would 

 make a small proportion of the narrowest part of the narrowest seas 

 in question." 



Mr. Madison was speaking of the narrow seas surrounding Eng- 

 land, not of the narrow seas surrounding the British possessions on 

 the North Atlantic. The term, I dare say, is perfectly familiar to the 

 Tribunal, as it had a very definite meaning as regards the seas sur- 

 rounding England. 



