60 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



practice of Great Britain has been outside the Treaties is very well known 

 to the Tribunal, and the examples might be multiplied of the eases in 

 which that nation has ordered its subordinates to apply to the bays on 

 these fisheries the ten mile entrance rule or the six miles according to the 

 occasion. It has been repeatedly said that such have been only relax- 

 ations of the strict right, assented to by Great Britain in order to avoid 

 friction on certain special occasions. That may be. But it may also be 

 asserted that such relaxations have been very many and that the constant, 

 uniform, never contradicted, practice of concluding fishery Treaties from 

 1839 down to the present day, in all of which the ten miles entrance 

 bays are recognized, is the clear sign of a policy. This policy has but 

 very lately found a most public, solemn and unequivocal expression. 

 "On a question asked in Parliament on the 21st of February, 1907," says 

 Pitt Corbett, a distinguished English writer, "with respect to the Moray 

 Frith Case, it was stated that, according to the view of the Foreign Office, 

 the Admiralty, the Colonial Office, the Board of Trade and the Board of 

 Agriculture and Fisheries, the term 'territorial waters' was deemed to 

 include waters extending from the coast line of any part of the territory 

 of a State to three miles from the low water mark of such coast line and 

 the waters of all bays, the entrance to which is not more than dx miles, 

 and of which the entire land boundary forms part of the territory of the 

 same state." (Pitt Corbett, Cases and Opinions on International Law, 

 Vol. I, p. 143.) 



Is there a contradiction between these six miles and the ten miles of 

 the treaties just referred to? Not at all. The six miles are the conse- 

 quence of the three miles marginal belt of territorial waters in their coin- 

 cidence from both sides at the inlets of the coast and the ten miles far 

 from being an arbitrary measure are simply an extension, a margin given 

 for convenience to the strict six miles with fishery purposes. Where the 

 miles represent sixty to a degree in latitude the ten miles are besides the 

 sixth part of the same degree. The American Government in reply to the 

 observations made to Secretary Bay.vrd's Memorandum of 1888, said very 

 precisely : ' ' The width of ten miles was proposed not only because it had 

 been followed in Conventions between many other powers, but also be- 

 cause it was deemed reasonable and just in the present case; this Govern- 

 ment recognizing the fact that while it might have claimed a width of six 

 miles as a basis of settlement, fishing within bays and harbours only 

 slightly wider would be confined to areas so narrow as to render it prac- 

 tically valueless and almost necessarily expose the fishermen to constant 

 danger of carrying their operations into forbidden waters." (British 

 Case Appendix, page 416). And Professor John Basset Moore, a 

 recognized authority on International law, in a communication addressed 

 to the Institute of International Law, said very forcibly: "Since you 



