ARGUMENT OF SIB WILLIAM EOBSON. 1851 



jurisdiction, of course, I am thinking about fishing. In 1793 a ques- 

 tion arose that had nothing to do with fishing. It was a question 

 which turned entirely upon territorial jurisdiction. A French ship 

 captured an English ship in the Bay of Delaware. We are all so 

 familiar, now, with the controversy that I need not give any refer- 

 ences to it. The United States said : " You have no right to come and 

 carry on operations of war on my territory." And what did Great 

 Britain do? Great Britain at once wrote to the United States and 

 said : " That bay is your private property." Great Britain did not 

 say that the French ship had captured the English ship within the 

 3-mile limit or the 9-mile limit off the coast. In all that controversy 

 the coast was never referred to. The bay alone was referred to. I 

 do not think the word " coast " is mentioned in the whole controversy. 

 Everybody understood that the coast only carried the cannon-shot 

 distance, or whatever the distance then was ; that is all ; but the bay 

 has nothing to do with the cannon-shot at all. And so they demanded 

 reparation, and everybody agreed that that bay was the private 

 property of the United States. Mr. Warren has had great difficulty 

 in dealing with Delaware Bay in the course of his argument. When 

 I come to deal with his argument upon it I think I shall have the 

 pleasure of disclosing it as a master-piece of ingenuity; because he 

 wanted to claim that everybody's bays except his were open sea; 

 and in order to justify his own bays being treated as private property, 

 he laid down all the principles for which I am contending with regard 

 to my bays. I shall call Mr. Warren as a witness in favour of my 

 argument, in due course a willing witness because he has laid down 

 all my principles, and done it much better and more concisely than I 

 could do it myself. He said : " Delaware Bay is my bay, not because 

 there is a River Delaware flowing into it," that w T as one of the 

 grounds taken by the United States Attorney-General. He said: 

 " If there was no river there at all, equally it would be the private 

 property of the United States, because it is a bay ; that is all ; " no 

 other reason was wanted than that. There was no question of 9 

 miles or 10 miles it was a bay. That took place in 1793, following 

 upon the treaty of 1778, following upon the treaty of 1783, in every 

 one of which international documents the bay is treated as the private 

 property of the State whose coast is indented thereby. And it shows 

 what the attitude of the United States was. And it was followed 

 immediately afterwards by a treaty in which this view of bays is 

 put into one of the great international documents of that part of the 

 world Jay's Treaty, the treaty of 1794. 



Now, when the United States said : " Delaware Bay is a bay," what 

 did it mean, so far as fishing is concerned ? It meant, " It is my prop- 

 erty, and nobody shall fish here unless I wish it nobody. " Terri- 

 torial jurisdiction carries with it the absolute right to control the 

 fishery. 



