2166 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



asserting any general jurisdiction over bays, was the continuous 

 policy of the Empire, and continued throughout all this period of 

 discussion. 



That leads me to the statement made by Lord Fitzmaurice of the 

 position of the British Government in the House of Lords, on the 21st 

 February, 1907, during the debate regarding a question that had 

 arisen upon the waters of the Moray Firth. 



You will recall that Lord Fitzmaurice, in response to a question, 

 said there: 



" I pass to the position of the Foreign Office. The jurisdiction which 

 is exercised by a State over its merchant or trading vessels upon the 

 high seas is conceded to it in virtue of its ownership of them as 

 property in a place where no local jurisdiction exists. Therefore, 

 the first thing that, in these cases, the Foreign Office has to ask is, 

 Was there or was there not, territorial jurisdiction in the place where 

 the alleged events occurred? In regard to that I can certainly say 

 that according to the views hitherto accepted by all the Departments 

 of the Government chiefly concerned the Foreign Office, the Ad- 

 miralty, the Colonial Office, the Board of Trade, and the Board of 

 Agriculture and Fisheries and apart from the provisions of special 

 treaties, such as, for instance, the North Sea Convention, within the 

 limits to which that instrument applies, territorial waters are: 

 First, the waters which extend from the coastline of any part of the 

 territory of a State to three miles from the low-water mark of such 

 coastline; secondly, the waters of bays the entrance to which is not 

 more than six miles in width, and of which the entire land boundary 

 forms part of the territory of a State. By custom however and by 

 Treaty and in special convention the six-mile limit has frequently 

 been extended to more than six miles." 



As, for example, it had been in the North Sea Convention and the 

 treaty of 1839 with France. 



Now, that is no idle remark, it is no indifferent admission or ex- 

 pression: it is a formal and authoritative statement by the Under- 

 secretary of Foreign Affairs of the position of the Foreign Office 

 and the Colonial Office, and of the other branches of the British 

 Government which have any relation to the subject-matter in re- 

 gard to the policy of the Empire. It was not a statement made 

 with regard to the particular interests of Canada to a particular bay, 

 or of Newfoundland to a particular bay. It was a statement of the 

 policy of the great Empire which had interests all over the world, 

 and which had a great navy going out on to every sea. And, the 

 statement was a declaration of the same policy which was exhibited 

 by Great Britain in refraining from making any claim to territorial 

 jurisdiction over these Canadian bays generally. It was the same 

 policy which was exhibited by Great Britain in refusing to accept 

 the proposal of the United States to include chambers within head- 

 lands in the maritime jurisdiction in 1806, and to pass the territorial 



