AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 1665 



It was a necessity, so long as that channel was open to commerce. The 

 question which arose was this: A crime having been committed on 

 board of that ship while she was within three miles of the British coast, 

 was it committed within the body of the county? Was it committed 

 within the realm, so that an English sheriff could arrest the man, an. 

 English grand jury indict him, an English jury convict him, under 

 English law, he being a foreigner on board a foreign vessel, bound 

 from one foreign port to another, while perhaps the law of his own 

 country was entirely different 1 ? Well, it was extraordinary to see 

 how the common-law lawyers were put to their wits' end to make any- 

 thing out of that statement. The thorough-bred common-law lawjers 

 were the men who did not understand it; it was others, who sat 

 upon the bench, who understood it better ; and at last, by a majority 

 of one, it was most happily decided that the man had not commit- 

 ted an offense within a British county, and he was released. That 

 case turned not on a question of natural geography, nor on a ques- 

 tion of political geography. It raised the issue : What is the nature of 

 the authority that a neighboring nation can exercise within the three- 

 mile limit? 



I am naturally led to the question : "Does fishing go with the three- 

 mile line? r I have the honor to say to this tribunal that there is no 

 decision to that effect, though I admit that there is a great deal of loose 

 language in that direction. I do not raise any question respecting 

 those tish that adhere to the soil or to the ground under the sea. But 

 on what does that three-mile jurisdiction rest, and what is the nature of 

 it? I suppose we can go no further than this, that it rests upou the 

 necessities of the bordering nation ; the necessity of preserving its own 

 peace and safety and of executing its own laws. I do not think that 

 there is any other test. Then the question may arise, and does, whether, 

 in the absence of any attempt by statute or treaty to prohibit a foreign 

 vessel from following with the line or the seine and net the free swim- 

 ming fish within that belt, that act makes a man a trespasser by any 

 established law of nations? I am confident it does not. That, may it 

 please the tribunal, is the nature of this three-mile exclusion, for the 

 relinquishment of which Great Britain asks us to make pecuniary com- 

 pensation. It is one of some importance to her, a cause of constant 

 treuble, and, as I shall show you as has been shown you already by my 

 predecessors of very little pecuniary value to England in sharing it 

 with us, or to us in obtaining it, but a very dangerous instrument for 

 two nations to play with. 



I would say one word here about the decision in the privy council in 

 1877 respecting the territorial rights in Conception Bay. I have read 

 it over, and though I have very great respect for the common-law law- 

 yer Mr. Blackburn, who was called upon to pronounce upou a question 

 entirely novel to him, I believe that it your honors think it at all worth 

 while to look over this opinion, in which he undertakes to say that Con- 

 ception Bay is an interior bay of Newfoundland, and not public waters, 

 although it is some fifteen or more miles wide, you will find that he 

 makes this statement, which is conclusive, that an act of Parliament is 

 binding upon him, whether the act of Parliament be in confoVmity with 

 international law or not. But it is not binding upon you, not is the de- 

 cision. But there is nothing in the act of Parliament which speaks 

 upon that subject. It is the act 59 George III, intended to carry out 

 the Treaty of 1818, and for punishing persons who are fishing within 

 the bays ; and he infers from that, by one single jump, without any au- 

 thority whatever of judicial decision or legislative language, that it 

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