OPINIONS OF RECENT PUBLICISTS 683 



and he adds that the great improvements recently effected in 

 artillery seem to make it desirable that this distance should be 

 increased, but he holds that this can be done only by the 

 general consent of nations, or by specific treaty with particular 

 states. Phillimore, like most of the other writers, was ap- 

 parently ignorant of the fact that the Scandinavian and the 

 Iberian Powers claimed a limit much farther than three miles. 

 Halleck follows Wheaton in saying that the general usage 

 of nations superadds to bays, &c., an exclusive territorial juris- 

 diction over the sea for the distance of one marine league, or 

 the range of a cannon-shot, along all the shores or coasts of 

 the state, and that the maxim of law on the subject is terrce 

 dominium finitur ubi finitur armor uin vis, " which is gener- 

 ally recognised to be about three miles from the shore." 1 On 

 the other hand, Lawrence, in his edition of Wheaton (p. 321), 

 says very definitely that all the space through which pro- 

 jectiles thrown from the shore pass, being protected and 

 defended by these warlike instruments, is territorial and sub- 

 ject to the dominion of the Power that controls the shore : " The 

 greatest reach of a ball fired from a cannon on the land is, 

 then, really the limit of the territorial sea." Bishop, also 

 accepting Bynkershoek's principle, says that a cannon-shot is 

 estimated for the purpose of delimiting the territorial seas at 

 a marine league, but, like so many others, he argues from the 

 improvement of artillery that, " in reason, the distance would 

 now seem to require extension." 2 Woolsey, likewise adopting 

 the three-mile limit " or " cannon range, is of opinion that, " as 

 the range of cannon is increasing, and their aim becoming more 

 perfect, it might be thought that the sea-line of territory ought 

 to be wider," though this author does not think the point likely 

 to become of great importance. 3 Dana expresses the usual 

 vague opinion of the English and American writers in regard- 

 ing it as "settled that the limit of the territorial waters is, 

 in the absence of treaty, the marine league, or the cannon- 

 shot." 4 Sir Travers Twiss also speaks of the range of guns, 

 which, he says, with the common lack of information respecting 



1 International Law, 135. 



2 Commentaries on Criminal Law, iv. c. 5, s. 74. 



3 Introduction to the Study of International Law, s. 56. 



4 Wheaton's Intei-national Law, 8th ed., p. 359. 



