ARGUMENT OF ELIHU BOOT. 2007 



ritorial zone that is recognised in the international law of to-day. 

 War-ships may not pass without consent into this zone, because they 

 threaten. Merchant-ships may pass and repass, because they 

 1215 do not threaten. But merchant-ships may not enter into the 

 coast trade from port to port without consent, because they in- 

 terfere with the industry of the people, the natural right of the peo- 

 ple to carry on the intercourse between their own ports. Fishing ships 

 may not come to engage in fishing, because they interfere with the nat- 

 ural industry of the people on the coast, the natural, immemorial right 

 of the dwellers on the sea. Back in the remotest times, in all times, 

 whatever be the rule of freedom of the sea, however free it may be, it 

 is deeply embedded in human nature that the men who dwell by the 

 shore of the sea consider that they have a natural right to win their 

 support from the waters at their doors; and they look with natural 

 resentment at one coming from a distance to interfere with that right ; 

 and that immemorial, natural right of the coastal population to 

 secure support from the sea is an object of the right of protection by 

 the sovereign. 



That is essentially a relation of sovereignty. Efforts have been 

 made at times by monarchs in former days, when the old theory of 

 ownership prevailed, to separate some portions of the opportunity 

 and grant them to individuals or corporations special rights to fish, 

 seldom, I think, out in the marginal seas or territorial seas, but in 

 interior waters. However, those instances have been exceptional. 

 The attempt unduly to restrict this great natural right of his subjects, 

 and to create monopolies in particular places, was one of the great 

 things that cost Charles I his head. Universally, now. the relation of 

 the State to the fishing of its coastal population is the sovereign right 

 of protection ; and we are certified in this treaty that that is the rela- 

 tion of Great Britain, for in it she declares that this liberty which the 

 inhabitants of the United States are to have forever is to be in com- 

 mon with the subjects of Great Britain. 



Now, I say we are agreed upon this, and perhaps I should not dis- 

 cuss it further. It is the subject-matter of countless treaties regu- 

 lating these rights, sovereign acts, the North Sea Convention, treaties 

 with France of 1839, treaties of various and many powers with each 

 other, all in the exercise of this sovereign right of protection. 



The Act of 1878 of Great Britain puts the matter on a sound basis, 

 " The Territorial Waters Act." It is in the British Appendix, p. 574. 

 The second section of that Act says that an offence committed by a 

 person on the open sea within the territorial waters of Her Majesty's 

 dominions shall be punished, and so on, and then at the foot of that 

 page there is a definition : 



"The territorial waters of Her Majesty's dominions, in reference 

 to the sea, means such part of the sea adjacent to the coast of the 



