ARGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1217 



" Gulfs and wide bays. Over gulfs and wide bays the state no 

 longer has a right of property. (See a contrario article 538 Cc.) 

 It can only exercise the right of sovereignty. This last right is, 

 moreover subordinated to the condition that the effective power of 

 the state may be exercised throughout the entire extent of the gulf 

 or bay, which can not exceed the total range of cannon from its two 

 shores. In conventions or state laws, especially so far as concerns 

 the monopoly of fishing, we often adopt a rule by virtue of which 

 the right of sovereignty is exercised in an absolute manner only over 

 bays whose width does not exceed ten miles. (See Franco-British 

 Convention of August 2, 1839, and the French law of May 1st, 1888 ; 

 Hague Convention of May 6, 1882, article 2, covering fishing in the 

 North Sea.) 



" Wide gulfs, beyond the range of cannon ought to be assimilated 

 to the high seas. We cannot, therefore, admit the claim of the United 

 States over the Gulf of Mexico and over Hudson's Bay any more 

 than the English theory of Kings Chambers, or Narrow Seas, ac- 

 cording to which the entire space of sea contained between two shores 

 belonging to one state is under the sovereignty of that state. Thus 

 the English sought to make of the Irish Sea an English sea, under 

 the same title as the arms of the sea between Great Britain and the 

 Isle of Wight; and by the Ordinance of 1882 it considered as such 

 the Bay of Conception in Newfoundland, which extends forty miles 

 inland and is fifteen miles wide." 



Liszt, " Das Volkerrecht," first published in 1898, citing from fifth 

 edition, 1907, p. 91 ; United States extract, pp. 2 and 3 : 



" Special regulations are in force for bays and inlets. In their 

 interior positions, governable entirely from the shores, they are 

 private waters and thus are subject to the unlimited sovereignty of 

 the adjacent state; adjacent to these portions are those waters which 

 beyond their limits extend their waters into the open sea. 



" The border of the inner portion of bays and inlets is determined 

 by drawing an imaginary straight line from headland to headland 

 at that width of the bay where the middle point of the line can be 

 reached by the cannons placed upon both headlines of the shore. 

 From this line landward lies the enclosed bay and on the other side 

 towards the open sea the adjacent waters begin." 



Westlake. " International Law," published in 1905, vol. I, pp. 187- 

 188 ; United States extract, pp. 5 and 6 : 



"As to bays, if the entrance to one of them is not more than twice 

 the width of the littoral sea enjoyed by the country in question- 

 that is, not more than six sea miles in the ordinary case, eight in that 

 of Norway, and so forth there is no access from the open sea to the 

 bay except through the territorial water of that country, and the 

 inner part of the bay will belong to that country no matter how 

 widely it may expand. The line drawn from shore to shore at the 

 part where, in approaching from the open sea, the width first con- 

 tracts to that mentioned, will take the place of the line of low water, 

 and the littoral sea belonging to the state will be measured outwards 

 from that line to the distance, three miles or more, proper to the 

 state (1). But although this is the general rule, it often meets with 



