GENERAL ADOPTION OF THE THREE-MILE LIMIT 579 



exact measurement cannot easily be obtained ; but in a case 

 of this nature, in which the Court would not willingly act 

 with an unfavourable minuteness towards a neutral state, it 

 will be disposed to calculate the distance very liberally ; and 

 more especially, as the spot in question is a sand covered with 

 water only on the flow of the tide, but immediately connected 

 with the land of East Friesland, and when dry, may be con- 

 sidered as making part of it. I am of opinion, that the ship 

 was lying within those limits in which all direct hostile 

 operations are by the law of nations forbidden to be exer- 

 cised." l In this decision the three-mile limit is assumed to 

 be, " by the law of nations," the boundary of the neutral waters. 

 It is also to be observed that the distance was reckoned, not 

 from low-water mark, but apparently from the land ; while 

 according to the rule apparently governing such cases now, 

 the sand -bank itself would be a part of the territory, and 

 the distance of three miles would be measured from its outer 

 margin at low water (see fig. 19, p. 635). 



In deciding the second case, in which the circumstances were 

 much the same, Lord Stowell said that " in the sea, out of the 

 reach of cannon shot universal use is presumed " ; but he made 

 no reference to three miles as an equivalent distance. 2 A few 

 years later, in 1805, in deciding the case of the Anna, which 

 was captured at the mouth of the Mississippi by a British 

 privateer, and in which the question of the violation of 

 American waters had to be considered, the same judge, quot- 

 ing Bynkershoek, said: "We all know that the rule of law 

 on this subject is terrce dominium finitur, ubi finitur ar- 

 morum vis; and since the introduction of fire-arms, that 

 distance has usually been recognised to be about three miles 

 from shore." 3 



It is, as above stated, in these decisions of the High Court 

 of Admiralty that the three-mile limit originated in England. 

 They furnished the legal precedents which regulated subsequent 

 practice. The gunshot limit was a doctrine borrowed from 

 Continental publicists, and three miles as its equivalent from 



1 Robinson, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of 

 Admiralty, iii. 162. London, 1802. 



2 Ibid., 339. 3 Ibid., v. 373. 



