2 72 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



almost inevitably from the mere words of the renunciation clause. 

 The United States renounced 



"Any liberty ... to take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine 

 rtules of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors of His Britannic Majesty's 

 dominions." 



On or within. That 3 miles is not an arbitrary expression or 

 measurement. It is a reference to the recognized territorial zone. 

 We must ascribe that force to it. Lord Stowell had already so 

 described it in the "Twee Gebroeders" case, and the treaty of 

 1806 had already fixed the normal zone at 3 marine mUes. Lord 

 Bathurst, in his instructions to the Ghent Commissioners, had 

 already said that a limit of 3 marine miles must be observed. Then 

 by 1818 all those vague, old claims which nobody was quite sure 

 about and everybody was very insistent upon or against, had dis- 

 appeared, and they had come down to the 3-mile limit. The zone 

 of jurisdiction which, as a matter of course and without any asser- 

 tion, is accorded to every country for the protection of its coast, 

 arid this "three marine miles" plainly refers to that 3-niile terri- 

 torial zone. You must suppose that the bays which are talked 

 about here are bays which are within the territorial zone wherever 

 it hes, and the renunciation is of the right to take fish, etc., 

 on coasts, bays, creeks, and harbors that are within this terri- 

 torial zone. I say that there is a natural conclusion to be 

 drawn from these words perfectly in accord with the conclu- 

 sion that, by another Une of reasoning, another route, Mr. Warren 

 and Mr. Ewart reached — the agreement as to the proposition 

 that the subject-matter in controversy, the matter to which the 

 words "bays, creeks, harbors" apply, is the territory within, and 

 not additional to, the territorial limit, the territorial jurisdiction 

 of Great Britain. 



The President: Would it not then have been more natural 

 to have expressed it as you have expressed it just now by putting 

 in the words, "within three marine miles" behind "coasts, bays, 

 creeks, and harbors," instead of before? You said, "coasts, bays, 

 creeks, or harbors within three marine miles"; would it not have 

 been natural to have expressed it in the treaty in the same way as 

 you now express it in your argument ? 



