QUESTION FIVE. 221 



that this bay is by prescription part of the exclusive territory of 

 Great Britain." 



Professor Holland, of the University of Oxford, in his letters on 

 War and Neutrality, page 133, commenting on this decision, states: 



The subordinate question, also touched upon by the Admiral, of the 

 character to be attributed to bays, the entrance to which exceeds six 

 miles in breadth, presents more difficulty than that relating to strictly 

 coastal waters. I will only say that the Privy Council, in The Direct 

 U. S. Cable Co. v. Anglo-American Telegraph Co. (L. K. 2 App. 

 Ca. 394) (the Conception Bay case), carefully avoided giving an 

 opinion as to the international law applicable to such bays, but de- 

 cided the case before them, which had arisen with reference to the 

 Bay of Conception, in Newfoundland, on the narrow ground that, 

 as a British court, they were bound by certain assertions of jurisdic- 

 tion made in British acts of Parliament. 



Sir Robert Finlay, in the course of his oral argument before the 

 Alaskan Boundary Tribunal, said, with reference to this Conception 

 Bay case, (Minutes of proceedings at London, vol. 6, Congressional 

 reprint, 1904, p. 237) : 



It was not necessary in the case [Conception Bay Case] to decide 

 the point on the question of international law because the point of 

 controversy between the two companies was whether the waters of 

 the bay could be considered as British territory as between them, and 

 there was a statute which seemed to make an end of the point. 



Lord Blackburn, in delivering the judgment in the Conception 

 Bay case (page 419) stated: 



It also shews that usage and the manner in which that portion of 

 the sea had been treated as being part of the county was material, and 

 this was clearly Lord Hale's opinion, as he says not that a bay is part 

 of the county, but only that it may be. * * * 



It seems generally agreed that where the configuration and dimen* 

 sions of the bay are such as to shew that the nation occupying the 

 adjoining coasts also occupies the bay it is part of the territory; and 

 with this idea most of the writers on the subject refer to defensibility 

 from the shore as the test of occupation; some suggesting therefore a 

 width of one cannon shot from shore to shore, or three miles ; some a 

 cannon shot from each shore, or six miles ; some an arbitrary distance 

 of ten miles. * * * 



If it were necessary in this case to lay down a rule the difficulty of 

 the task would not deter their Lordships from attempting to fulfill it. 

 But in their opinion it is not necessary so to do. It seems to them 

 that, in point of fact, the British Government has for a long period 

 exercised dominion over this bay, and that their claim has been 

 acquiesced in by other nations, so as to shew that the bay has been for 

 a long time occupied exclusively by Great Britain, a circumstance 

 which in the tribunals of any country would be very important. And 

 moreover (which in a British tribunal is conclusive) the British Leg- 

 islature has by Acts of Parliament declared it to be part of the 



