296 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



One further observation I should make about this debate. The 

 debate arose upon the arrest of certain Norwegian fishermen in 

 the waters of the Moray Firth, a great indentation which runs 

 into the coast of Scotland, very much as the Bay of Fundy runs 

 into the coast of the British possessions in North America. There 

 was a statute which in terms prohibited certain kinds of fishing 

 in the waters of that firth; and Norway protested against the 

 arrest of her citizens in that water, which Norway claimed to be 

 the free sea. 



Under the old doctrine of the King's Chambers it would have 

 been the territorial water of Great Britain; but the doctrine of 

 the King's Chambers, as it has survived that old period of wide 

 and vague claims, is now a doctrine based upon the circumstance 

 of each case in regard to each area of water, and Moray Firth must 

 depend upon the question whether there were circumstances to be 

 asserted by Great Britain justifying an appropriation by her of the 

 waters of that indentation, and the exercise of sovereignty by her 

 over it. 



Upon this debate the Foreign Office of Great Britain allowed the 

 protest of Norway, and released the Norwegian citizens who had 

 been arrested for violating this statute upon that water; and 

 accepted the situation that this statute, which in terms covered 

 this water, was to be construed as the Courts in England have 

 always construed statutes, that by their terms extend beyond 

 the limits of British jurisdiction, as applying only to British sub- 

 jects, and not applying to Norwegian subjects. 



I now have to state what seems to me a very interesting fact, 

 that this proposal of the Americans, which was the basis of the 

 negotiation of 1806, to include the chambers within headlands in 

 the maritime jurisdiction of the two countries, and to construe the 

 territorial zone as passing outside of a line drawn from headland to 

 headland, was repeated in the negotiation of 18 18. 



The proposal was included in the same paper, which included the 

 proposal by the Americans of the fishery article. That is a paper 

 which was submitted by the American plenipotentiaries at the 

 conference of the 17th September, 1818. It is included in Article 

 G of that paper, which is not printed in the appendices. Both 

 countries have the paper, and both have printed extracts from the 



