not ambitious of naval power. Some writers have insisted that this appurtenant jurisdiction of a maritime State extends one hundred miles from its coast sea-ward, and in the fourteenth century, the Sovereign of Sardinia is said to have claimed a similar curtilage for that island. Valin proposed the sounding line as the measure of this right, and as a mode to ascertain the boundary of a nation's marine jurisdiction. Hubner, Vattel, Azuni, Bynkershoek, Sir Wm. Scott in the British Admiralty Court, France and the United States concur that, upon general principles, this maritime curtilage and the internal or municipal jurisdiction of a nation extends a marine league to sea, which is commonly esteemed the reach of a cannon shot from the shore. The act of Congress, passed in 1794, declares all captures within a marine league of any part of the American coast illegal, and it confers jurisdiction over such illegal captures upon the District Courts of the United States. The same rule is said to have been declared by the Court of Cassation of France, annulling a more extensive jurisdiction claimed by the municipal authorities of a French West India Island many years since. This rule applied liberally furnishes a natural and convenient line of demarkation between the internal jurisdiction and propriety rights of maritime nations, and the open sea, which is

the common highway of all nations, and subject to no municipal control of any state. Our general rule applicable to all continents and islands, is this, that from their outermost projections, or promentories, at the distance of a marine league sea-ward, points be taken, and let these be connected by straight lines, one or more, so as to complete this marine boundary. All islands and fisheries within would, by this rule, fall under the internal jurisdiction of the State governing the shore, and all without sea-ward would be the common inheri tance of all mankind, from the Father of all. By this rule the Atlantic boundary of the United States might be thus easily and naturally traced. Extend the north-eastern boundary line between the United States and the British Provinces to a point in the Atlantic one marine league from the coast, and from thence draw a straight line to a point a marine league due east of the outermost part of the island of Nantucket, and from thence draw a straight line to a point due east of the ex、 tremity of Cape Hatteras at the distance of a ma, rine league therefrom, and from thence draw a straight line to a sea station southerly from the point of Florida and distant a marine league, from the south part of the most southerly American island off the coast, and from thence draw a straight line to a point a marine league at sea in the south

western boundary of the United States, extended so as to intersect it and complete our Atlantic line of demarkation. In passing around Florida and the small islands and Cape Cod, the line must be deflected outward from a straight line so that not less than a marine league of curtilage shall be allowed at all points of the whole line of demarkation. If the United States should own any island beyond this boundary, its marine curtilage around it would be, as well as that of all other islands, a marine league, ascertained according to this convenient rule. It would be, and is applicable to all maritime States, and seems founded in nature and sanctioned by the moral law of nations. By this rule the fisheries appurtenant to the coasts of continents and islands would belong, as they naturally do, to the nation owning the adjacent shore, while the right of fishing and free navigation beyond the marine limit would remain for the common use of all men of all nations. By this rule all bays and waters within the line of demarkation and all enclosed waters, like the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and Long Island Sound, would fall within the internal legislation of the United States, and of the States according to the constitutional distribution of Governmental authority. In all countries, ail waters enclosed within the land of one nation, except a passage to the sea,

would by this just and natural rule belong to it, and are subject to its jurisdiction. This reasonable rule, according with the common sense of mankind, forms part of the moral law of nations.

SECTION THIRTEENTH. UNFOUNDED MARITIME PRE

TENSIONS.

Nations at different eras have put forth the most extravagant pretensions to marine jurisdic tion as appurtenant to their territories. The Danes have pretended to jurisdiction over the Sound and other passes into the Baltic. Venice owning a part of the coasts of the Adriatic sea, claimed, in the pride of her power, exclusive jurisdiction of it, and the espousal of that aquatic bridegroom by the queen of the isles of the Adriatic, is said to have been a brilliant exhibition of her supposed right of sovereignty. The Portuguese in the zenith of their naval power, like Venice, put forth equally absurd pretensions to appropriate seas that are the common property of all men. power claimed exclusive authority over the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the sole right of commerce with the East Indies, and she sought to exclude all other nations from those Oceans and the India trade. Grotius and all writers of authority on national law, Holland, England, and all other civilized nations, have condemned this

That

pretended monoply of those seas as contrary to the law of nature and nations. Spain once pretended to possess an exclusive right to the Gulf of MexiCo. The high and holy law, do as you would be done unto, and the moral law of nations, also reprobate these unfounded claims to a monopoly of the seas and oceans. These baseless assumptions of municipal authority over the high seas, though condemned by right reason and the moral sense of mankind, have been at times renewed under the promptings of naval ambition and commercial avarice. In the seventeenth century England, by the Mare Clausum of the celebrated and learned Selden, put forth a pretension to municipal jurisdiction to the four seas adjacent to the British Isle. Britain, from time to time, has put forth this absurd claim by her writers and statesmen, sometimes plainly and frankly as being within reach of her floating cannon and within control of her ships of war. At others, prescription and presumed consent of European nations are set up as the ground of this fictitious right. During the war with Napoleon, Britain asserted a more extensive authority over the high seas, and in effect claimed a municipal jurisdiction over the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Baltic, and in 1806, '7 and '8, by orders in council and by act of Parliament, she assumed a legislative control over the com