ARGUMENT OP ELIHTJ 1?OOT. 21 Gl 



wonderful period when, within the space of a few years, Columbus 

 discovered America, and Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape, in the 

 era when Grotius wrote the " Mare Liberum " ; when great commer- 

 cial nations arose, and England became the greatest; then the old 

 basis of the doctrine of Kings Chambers became of little conse- 

 quence compared with the doctrine of freedom upon all other coasts. 

 The importance of that principle of the widest possible extent of 

 freedom, for naval operations, developed by these compelling causes 

 to which I have referred, marks the difference between the Jay 

 Treaty of 1794 and this treaty of 1806. In 1794 the head of Louis 

 XVI had just fallen by the guillotine in the preceding year a 

 disorderly and tumultuous strife was going on in which all Europe 

 was against republican and communistic France. No powers were 

 tested and no dangers were apprehended. While in 1806 the great 

 genius Xapoleon had taken control and was frightening the world, 

 and Great Britain realised that she must fight for her life and for 

 civilisation, the position she assumed then I say she never departed 

 from. 



It is very interesting to observe that Great Britain never has 

 made any general claim to sovereignty over the bays that indent 

 her dominions since the passing away of her old, wide, vague claims. 

 The treaty of 1839 with France is an exclusion of such claims. That 

 adopted the 3-mile limit, and it adopted a line of maritime jurisdic- 

 tion at a point where a bay becomes 10 miles wide. What became 

 of all the rest? That shows- that in 1839 Great Britain was not 

 asserting any general jurisdiction over chambers between headlands, 

 bays indenting her territory, merely because they were between 

 headlands, and merely because they indented her territory ; but that, 

 as to all the generality of bays, she was willing to fix the limit of 

 her maritime jurisdiction at the point where they became 10 miles 

 wide. The North Sea Treaty of 1882 shows, upon a wider scale, 

 the same disposition. 



It is a most interesting fact that nowhere in the long discussions 

 which have occurred between Great Britain and the United States 

 regarding the right of Great Britain to exclude American fisher- 

 men from these great bays nowhere, at no time, has Great Britain 

 ever planted herself upon the proposition that those bays were ter- 

 ritorial waters of Great Britain. I confess to some surprise when 

 an examination of this correspondence for the purpose of ascertain- 

 ing whether that was, or was not, so revealed to me the fact that 

 Great Britain had never planted herself upon that position. She 

 has always stood narrowly upon the construction of the renuncia- 

 tion clause. Canada asserted the territorial right, Nova Scotia as- 

 serted it, but Great Britain never. There was an express assertion 

 of a right to exclude Americans from the waters of these bays on 



