372 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



of the sea it is comparable to the free passage on a road 

 across another's land and it cannot always be claimed as 

 a right. With respect to the argument that the sea cannot 

 be appropriated because of its physical properties, he points 

 to the example of rivers and springs, which even by Roman 

 law may be appropriated, as well as of lakes. It is not 

 true that the sea has no banks or limits : it is clearly 

 bounded by the shores; some seas, as the Caspian, are 

 completely enclosed, and the Mediterranean is so every- 

 where except at the Straits of Gibraltar. Elsewhere there 

 are islands, rocks, promontories, by which boundaries may 

 be determined; and limits may be set in the open sea by 

 nautical science, as in the fixing of latitude and longitude; 

 and that was shown by the Bull of Pope Alexander VI., 

 and the hundred-mile limit of the Italians. Selden denies 

 that the sea is inexhaustible from promiscuous use. On 

 the contrary he says a sea may be made worse for him 

 that owns it by reason of other men's fishing, navigation, 

 and commerce, and less profit accrue from it, as where pearls, 

 corals, and other things of that kind are produced. In 

 such cases the abundance may be diminished by promiscuous 

 use just as readily as in the case of metals and suchlike 

 on land; and the same argument applies to all kinds of 

 fishing. 1 



It was, however, the second book of Mare Clausum which 

 gave it its chief political importance. It was appropriate 

 and necessary that the claims of Charles should be justified 

 in the domain of law and custom ; it was still more necessary 

 that they should be supported by weighty precedents 

 existing in the history of England that some of his 

 predecessors had been styled Lords of the Sea, and had 

 exercised sovereign jurisdiction over foreigners even on 

 their own coasts. After partially defining the British 

 seas (see p. 19), Selden, as mentioned in a former chapter, 



1 Lib. i. cap. xxii. "Sed vero ex aliorum piscatione, navigatione, commerciis 

 ipsum mare deterius Domiuo cseterisque ejus jure gaudentibus fieri non raro 

 videmus. Scilicet minui, quod alias inde percipi posset, commodum. Quod 

 manifestius cernitur in marium usu, quorum fructus sunt uniones, corallium, id 

 genus csetera. Etiam minuitur in boras marium hujusmodi abundantia, non alit'er 

 ac sive metalli fodinarum ac lapicidinarum, sive hortorum, quando fructus eorum 

 auferuntur. . . . Et similis sane ratio qualiscunque piscationis." 



