ARGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM ROBSON. 1887 



tain negotiations. What was their effect? In 1806 the parties, as 

 the learned President has pointed out, being engaged in negotiations 

 on a totally different matter, impressments, had to consider the ques- 

 tion of this limit, and they agreed, or rather provisionally agreed, be- 

 cause they came to no agreement, that it might be taken at 3 miles, if 

 the other subjects of the agreement could be concluded. The other 

 subjects of the agreement never came to any agreement; so the 3- 

 mile matter dropped. But before the agreement was finally dropped, 

 the 3 miles had been altered into 5. 



And out of the proposals which never reached an agreement, one 

 of which was that there should be a 5-mile limit, the United States 

 now pretend that Great Britain had so completely bound itself to a 

 3-mile limit that that must be taken to be the common understanding 

 of the parties in 1818, and that being assumed to be the common 

 understanding of the parties, all you had to do was to double your 3 

 miles, and then you have got your 6-mile bay. I say, take it as the 

 understanding of the parties as much as you like ; but by what right 

 do you double your 3 miles, and wherever the 3-mile lines meet at the 

 entrance to a bay, by what right do you say that that bay is territorial 

 and any larger bay is not ? What is the idea that they are proceeding 

 on. It is a very simple fallacy. They say: " Once you have got two 

 territorial lines meeting at the entrance of the bay, the bay is land- 

 locked." That is Mr. Warren's idea. Why? Is it to be supposed 

 that vessels cannot get in because the two 3-mile lines meet? The 

 two 3-mile lines make no difference whatever to the right of the 

 vessel to enter. The whole of this theory that you can close a bay by 

 showing the junction of the two 3-mile line disappears when you 

 remember the right of innocent passage. Every vessel has a right 

 to go within the 3 miles for innocent passage. So that you have not 

 locked your bay by showing that the land at the entrance of the bay 

 is all within the territory. That does not lock it at all. Your vessel 

 still has the right to go through on its innocent passage ; and then it 

 gets inside and the bay opens up. I will take what I may call a 

 bottle-necked bay a narrow entrance, but opening out beyond the 

 entrance. Then what happens to the vessel ? It is more than 3 miles 

 from the shore. And yet Mr. Warren would say you must not fish 

 there. Why may not you, if it is more than 3 miles from the shore? 

 Mr. Warren has nothing but his 3 miles to rely upon, when he has, 

 as he imagines, closed the entrance to the bay. The vessel has, never- 

 theless, come in. He does not know what to do with her when he 

 gets her into the middle of the bay. There she is far more than 3 

 miles from the shore. Is she entitled to fish or not? In answer to 

 that, Mr. Warren says : " Well, I should say not." His theory being, 

 apparently, that she had no right there at all. But she had a right 

 to be there if she was entitled to fish anywhere outside 3 miles from 



