110 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



1818, and August 2nd, 1839, as fixing a distance of three miles from 

 low water mark for coastal jurisdiction. And Fiori, the well-known 

 Italian jurist, referring to the same marine miles of coastal jurisdic- 

 tion, says : " This rule recognized as early as the treaty of 1818 between 

 the United States and Great Britain, and that between Great Britain 

 and France in 1839, has again been admitted in the treaty of 1867." 

 (" Nouveau Droit international public," Paris, 1885, section 803.) 



This is only a recognition of the permanency and the continuity 

 of States. The treaty of 1818 is not a separate fact unconnected 

 with the later policy of Great Britain. Its negotiators were not 

 parties to such international convention, and their powers disap- 

 peared as soon as they signed the document on behalf of their coun- 

 tries. The Parties to the treaty of 1818 were the United States and 

 Great Britain, and what Great Britain meant in 1818 about bays and 

 fisheries, when they, for the first time, fixed a marginal jurisdiction 

 of three miles, can be very well explained by what Great Britain, 

 the same permanent political entity, understood in 1839, 1843, 1867, 

 1874, 1878 and 1882, when fixing the very same zone of territorial 

 waters. That a bay in Europe should be considered as different 

 from a bay in America, and subject to other principles of interna- 

 tional law, cannot be admitted in the face of it. Wliat the practice 

 of Great Britain has been outside the treaties is very well known to 

 the Tribunal, and the examples might be multiplied of the cases in 

 which that nation has ordered its subordinates to apply to the bays 

 on these fisheries the ten mile entrance rule or the six miles accord- 

 ing to the occasion. It has been repeatedly said that such have been 

 only relaxations of the strict right, assented to by Great Britain in 

 order to avoid friction on certain special occasions. That may be. 

 But it may also be asserted that such relaxations have been very 

 many, and that the constant, uniform, never contradicted, practice of 

 concluding fishery treaties from 1839 down to the present day, in all 

 of which the ten miles entrance bays are recognised, is the clear sign 

 of a policy. This policy has but very lately found a most public, 

 solemn, and unequivocal expression. " On a question asked in Par- 

 liament on the 21st February, 1907," says Pitt Cobbett, a distin- 

 guished English writer, with respect to the Moray Firth Case, "it 

 was stated that, according to the view of the Foreign OfRce, the 

 Admiralty, the Colonial OfRce, the Board of Trade and the Board of 

 Agriculture and Fisheries, the term ' territorial waters ' was deemed 

 to include waters extending from the coast line of any part of the 

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

 coast line, and the waters of all bays, the entrance to which is not 

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

 part of the territory of the same State." (Pitt Cobbett, "Cases and 

 Opinions on International Law," vol. i, p. 143.) 



