THE FUR-SEALS AND THE BERING SEA AWARD 5 



minutes north, are exclusively reserved to subjects of the Kus- 

 sian Empire. 



SECTION II. Accordingly, no foreign vessel shall be allowed 

 either to put to shore at any of the coasts and islands under Rus- 

 sian dominion as specified in the preceding section, or even to 

 approach the same to within a distance of less than one hundred 

 Italian miles. Any vessel contravening this provision shall be 

 subject to confiscation with her whole cargo. 



At the time of the promulgation of this law (1821), the 

 principle of absolute freedom of navigation in the open sea 

 was generally recognized, and no nation could rightfully 

 assert her sovereignty over the ocean further than three 

 marine leagues from her own shores. This distance was 

 considered the average range of a cannon shot, and, there- 

 fore, the limit within which a people could protect their marine 

 jurisdiction from the land. Seven years before that time 

 the American commissioners at Ghent had made the attitude 

 of the United States Government in this matter quite clear 

 by their determined opposition to England's threatened 

 assertion of jurisdiction over the Newfoundland banks. 

 Alexander the First either considered himself superior to 

 the operation of international law, or he may have regarded 

 the entire Bering Sea as a closed sea, or mare clausum, over 

 which he could properly exercise sole control, even to the 

 total exclusion of all foreign vessels. The fact that in 1821 

 the waters of the Bering Sea washed only Russian shores, 

 which, in some respects, suggested a closed sea, probably led 

 the Emperor Alexander to regard his assertions of enlarged 

 dominion over the whole or any part of it as not only just 

 and right, but fully in keeping with the principles of inter- 

 national law. Bering Sea is in reality a vast ocean, com- 

 municating with the larger Pacific Ocean through many 

 channels of great width. It is, indeed, a part of the greater 

 ocean, and should properly be so considered, being separated 

 from it only by a line of islands that often lie many miles 

 apart. 



The violation of legal principles concerning the extent of 

 marine jurisdiction, made by the Russian Emperor's ukase of 



