694 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



and with Denmark concerning Iceland, are instances in point. 

 The fishery interest is thus the determining interest, and the 

 one which has made these various conventions desirable. 



There appears to be little doubt that, in many cases at least, 

 the three-mile boundary which has been commonly fixed in the 

 fishery conventions is inadequate from the point of view of the 

 fisheries, and this is the opinion of most of the experts and 

 authorities, as is explained below. It must not be forgotten 

 that the three-mile limit was selected, not on any grounds 

 special to fisheries, but because it had been already recognised 

 and put into force in connection with the rights of neutrals 

 and belligerents in time of war, as representing the approx- 

 imate range of guns at the time. It is in reality a product of 

 the maritime wars in the latter part of the eighteenth and 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century, and its application to 

 the right of fishing is accidental and arbitrary. The boun- 

 daries which were formerly proposed as limiting the right to 

 exclusive fishery, independently of any question of the rights 

 of neutrals or the range of cannon, were invariably greater 

 than three miles. The range of vision was employed in 

 Scotland and on the English coast later ; its equivalent of 

 fourteen miles was embodied in the Draft Treaty of Union 

 between England and Scotland in 1604, and was proposed 

 again in 1618 ; and Sir Philip Meadows, the most able opponent 

 of extravagant claims to maritime sovereignty, favoured a 

 similar distance in 1689. Limits of eight miles and ten miles 

 to be enforced against foreigners were fixed in the Fishery 

 Bill passed by the House of Commons in 1660, while as late 

 as 1824 and 1827 the Dutch Government decreed a limit of 

 six miles for their fishermen on the British coasts. We have 

 seen, too, that the wider extent of sea in which rights of ex- 

 clusive fishery are claimed by the Scandinavian and Iberian 

 states exists in great measure because those Powers established 

 their limit without reference to Bynkershoek's doctrine, and 

 before indeed it became prevalent. 



The same need of a wider limit is shown in the municipal 

 legislation of many countries, which was specially designed 

 with the object of preserving sea fisheries, as well as in certain 

 international agreements. There are two classes of sea fisheries 

 which have received special treatment beyond the ordinary 

 limits of territorial waters, and both on the same principle 



