182 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



The application to them of legal principles is indirect ; they 

 can only be made through the more or less doubtful analogies 

 of natural straits, arms of the sea, territorial waters, and the 

 high seas. The value of such comparison is not always to 

 be relied upon ; but the general advance of liberal sentiments 

 relative to the freedom of the seas, as developed in the 

 progressive evolution of international ethics, is far more 

 significant. This would indicate a decided tendency toward 

 impressing an international character upon ship canals con- 

 necting open seas. 



The protracted controversy concerning mare clausum and 

 mare liberum, which lasted for more than a hundred years, 

 long since resulted in complete victory for the adherents of 

 the latter doctrine. The high seas are free to all vessels, but 

 natural straits connecting the high seas, when narrow, and 

 lying within the territory of a single power, may or may not 

 be entirely free, according to circumstances. Their exact 

 position in law has not yet been satisfactorily determined, 

 though it may be confidently asserted that the trend of 

 modern usage is to withhold from nations, through whose 

 territory such waterways pass, exclusive control over their 

 navigation. 



It is to-day generally agreed that bodies of water answer- 

 ing to the description of a strait ought to be free became 

 they are in a greater or less degree necessary to navigation ; 

 and only such limitations upon their full freedom of naviga- 

 tion are allowable as the security of the state through which 

 the strait passes seems to demand. When the interior waters 

 of a state terminate at either end in the open sea, the result- 

 ing freedom of navigation in them, in times of war, might 

 operate as a serious menace to the welfare of such state ; 

 hence it is that certain modifications of the free rights of 

 navigation in such waters may be made by special compact. 

 Yet the fact is not altered that they do in a measure belong 

 to the world's commerce. A sovereign may not debar alien 

 vessels from innocently using such courses, and his own 

 sovereignty over them has been practically limited to the 

 extent of collecting only such dues from passing vessels as 



