THE JURIDICAL CONTROVERSIES 341 



task, which, we are told, he performed " with uncommon 

 ability." 



This charge cannot be made against the two authors whose 

 voices were raised in opposition to the prevailing opinions as 

 to the appropriation of the sea before the work of Grotius 

 appeared, and of whose writings he made considerable use. 

 One of these was a Spanish monk, Francis Alphonso de Castro, 

 who wrote about the middle of the sixteenth century, protest- 

 ing against the Genoese and Venetians prohibiting other 

 peoples from freely navigating the Ligurian and Adriatic Seas, 

 as being contrary to the imperial law, the primitive right of 

 mankind, and the law of nature ; and also against the Spanish 

 and Portuguese claims for exclusive rights to the navigation to 

 the East and West Indies. 1 The other author, also a Spaniard, 

 was Ferdinand Vasquez or Vasquius, who expressed the same 

 opinions as de Castro, and for the same reasons. He held that 

 the sea could not be appropriated, but had remained common 

 to mankind since the beginning of the world ; that the claim 

 of the Portuguese to forbid to others the navigation to the East 

 Indies, and that of the Spaniards to a similar prohibition to 

 sail through "the spacious and immense sea" to the West 

 Indies, were no less vain and foolish (non minus insance) than 

 the pretensions of the Venetians and Genoese. The law of pre- 

 scription, he said, was purely civil, and could have no force in 

 controversies between princes and peoples who acknowledged 

 no superior, because the peculiar civil laws of any country were 

 of no more value with respect to foreign nations than as if 

 they did not exist ; to decide such controversies recourse must 

 be had to the law of nations, primitive or secondary, which it 

 was evident could never admit of such a usurpation of a title 

 to the sea. With regard to the right of fishery, Vasquius drew 

 a distinction between fishing in the sea and in rivers or lakes. 

 He held that the sea had been from the first, and still remained, 

 by the primitive right of mankind, free both for navigation 

 and fishing, and that its use could not be exhausted by fishing, 

 while lakes and rivers may be so exhausted. 2 



1 De Potettate Legit Pfrnalit, lib. ii. c. 14. Quoted by Nys, Let Originet rfw 

 Droit International, p. 382, -and by Grotius, Mare Liberum, c. vii. 



* D. Fernandus Vaaquius, Controvertia Itluttrei, Venice, 1564, lib. ii. c. Ixxxiz. 

 . 30 (p. 356, ed. Frankfurt, 1668). 



