have the right to forbid access to them to vessels which threaten their security. This interdiction is easy, for roadsteads and ports defended from all points of the coast may even be artificially closed. Human industry often marks them with its imprint. Man, in fact, transforms them and fashions them in all ways. At times even, ports are only artificial works constructed on beaches in which a considerable commercial movement centers, and which do not offer a real shelter for navigation. It therefore follows that the right of territorial sovereignty is better justified in the case of roadsteads and ports than it is in the territorial sea, because the means of possession and action are more efficacious and more effective over the former than over the latter. Thus, all municipal laws of States declare roadsteads and ports as national property.

However, this right of property always attaches to the land around the port or roadstead and even to the soil which supports them, but the water itself, like the territorial sea, is not susceptible of permanent ownership. It is subject to a transitory sovereignty limited to the mass actually inclosed at one time. If it flows out and becomes confused with the open sea, it escapes the sovereignty to which it is subjected while in port. This is the result of the character of this element (water), to the possession of which one can not lay claim except to the extent that one has rights over its container and over which, in the absence of the latter, all right of property and sovereignty ceases. The mariner who in the open sea dips out a glass of water appropriates it, but if he throws it back in the sea all sovereignty disappears, because nothing distinguishes the water of which he has been possessed from that common to all men, and because this element is physically impossible of actual possession.

From the point of view of commerce and navigation the use of ports is inexhaustible. In fact, vessels which throw out anchor in a port, whatever their number, provided they find sufficient room, occasion no damage. Communicating with the open seas, ports in a measure partake of the same liberty. They are the naval stations of the people. There the mariner ends his voyage and exchanges the natural, industrial, and manufactured products. Thus it is with reason, that some publicists in the name of the liberty of the seas extend to ports the liberty of free navigation as a concession from the sovereign State. For ourselves, we take the point of view that it is a right belonging to all peoples and not a concession. Undoubtedly a State which possesses a seaport has over its waters a right of police and sovereignty in the interests of its defense, but it can not, without plausible reason, refuse to open it to innocent navigation. We even think that if it kept it closed without reasonable motive it could be compelled to open it, as China was made to do with the port of Canton.

CAUCHY: Le Droit Maritime International. Paris, 1862. Volume 1, page 37.-For the present it suffices to have shown by two convincing arguments that the very nature of the sea resists the domain of man and that, being inexhaustible in its use, it lacks the one characteristic which legally could justify an individual and exclusive possession.

Whence we believe that we may conclude that a state of liberty, of free navigation, of common and indivisible enjoyment is the normal, natural, and actual status of the sea just as private possession, cultivation, or division constitutes the natural, normal, and actual state of the land.

But this first principle of maritime law, so evident and absolute when we consider navigation and fishing in the open sea far from any shore, is transformed and modified when the sea approaches the land and becomes almost confused with it.

The two reasons upon which the entire liberty of the open sea is founded no longer apply with the same force to either bays or gulfs by which the sea penetrates into the land, or even to the waters which wash the headlands or islands of those which merely extend along the coasts.

If it is true that the mass of waters of which the open sea is composed, by its nature escapes occupation or domination, we must recognize that these same waters divided into stretches of small extent become susceptible of public, or even private property. Let us in thought jump the gap which separates the sea from a mere pond. This pond, as well as the source that feeds it, is considered by the civil law as an integral part of the land which surrounds it. Let this pond enlarge itself into a lake, let this source increase into a river: neither the one nor the other will entirely change its nature. Only public law will perhaps dominate and at times replace private law when the shores of a lake or those of a navigable river belong in their entirety to the same State, and if they belong to the territory of several nations, international law will commence to govern them, but without disputing to riparian States the exclusive right of useful domination over those waters and the police of their navigation and fishing. Let us go further and descend to the mouth of this river, where, let us suppose, this lake becomes a bay or gulf, communicating by an opening, more or less wide, with the ocean, it at once falls under the empire of maritime law. It becomes sea in its turn, but it is one of those seas which publicists call interior or territorial seas. to show that they still retain more the nature of the territory than of the open sea, and, in fact, the sovereign of the adjacent land of this gulf may use it as a roadstead for his vessels. He may establish a port in this bay. He may finally supply with fortresses the head

lands which defend its access and make himself absolute master of these waters so intimately connected with his domain. Finally does not this mixed nature of the neighboring seas off the shore again appear even beyond the gulf or bay at a place where the ocean simply washes the beach or the cliff which serves the State as a frontier? Does the domain of the sovereign over these waters depend solely upon the solution of the question whether the coast stretches out in a straight line or falls into curves of greater or smaller radius? Will the coast remain in the one as in the other hypothesis the actual frontier of such a kingdom or empire, and would the right of sovereignty and the right of defense be complete if the local prince had no police power to exercise over vessels which approach his land and over passengers and merchandise which might be discharged on his territory? Has he not, moreover, all the means of securing recognition near the shore for his legitimate domain by his flag, by his coast guards, by his forts, and by those different night and day signals which he will have established in order to watch over the security of travelers?

Let us now see whether the other reason which we have just invoked for the support of our principle does not also lose some of its force when it is applied to the portions of the sea which wash the coasts of a State.

We stated that one of the principal uses of the sea was for fishing. Now, if fishing could justly be considered as inexhaustible in this ocean, whose wealth or depth we do not know, is the same true of those portions adjoining the coast of those gulfs and bays which are plowed daily by numerous fishing vessels, all parts of which have been explored by the sounding lead, where not only the abundance or rarity of the fish but its quality, taste, and size are known in advance, and thus become the more or less exhaustible of an industry especially adapted to the inhabitants of those shores? Are there not, moreover, certain kinds of submarine products which are found only in a small number of places, and which, therefore, constitute a legitimate accessory of the territorial soil of the adjacent State? Who can maintain, for example, that coral and pearl fishing is not one of the natural resources which Providence has distributed among different peoples, spreading it at the surface of the ground or water for some and obliging others to seek it at the expense of money and dangers within the bowels of the earth or at the depth of abysses?

It can not be doubted by anybody that the portions of the sea adjoining the coasts in a certain measure participate of the nature of the coasts themselves and may, in certain respects, fall within the useful domain of such State or people or in other respects depend upon its police.

But how far shall we extend this influence of the land, this sort of reciprocal action of the two elements on each other? This is a question which, by its generality, belongs to natural law, but it clearly falls within the domain of positive law in its special solutions.

Thus, the maritime zone over which the bordering States may compel obedience varies according to the nature and object of these rights. If we contemplate the exploitation of some special product of the sea, it seems proper to examine the limitations by which this exploitation is restricted by nature itself. If, on the other hand, we contemplate a general district of coastal fishing we must ascertain at what point opposing rights are encountered-how far, for example, the passing of a school of fish near the shore may restrict the right which other neighboring peoples, or even distant peoples, have of sharing in this liberality of Providence?

Under another aspect, if we regard the special conditions of public order which the sovereign of a port may impose upon ships which frequent it, and the fiscal dues whose payment he may exact as indemnity for expenses incurred for the benefit of general navigation, we shall be led to restrict the zone of this useful domain. We shall extend it further if we contemplate the general right of defense, which for the security of each State, ought to protect the approaches to its maritime frontiers. The natural configuration of the -hore, the difference between an open beach and a coast bristling with rocks and reefs may also be taken into consideration in other ystems; but if each is to have its relative justice, natural law rejects sbsolutely every theory which could base the right upon force, and which, for example, would assign to the zone of maritime possession an extent proportional to the number of war vessels which a State could establish to protect far seawards its domain or its rights. It is evident that in thus regarding force as the measure of right we should soon arrive at a complete annihilation of the liberty of the seas. Of what utility would it be for this principle to remain written in the code of the law of nations like a dead letter or illusory protest, if by means of the progressive encroachment over the more frequented and safe seas, the natural order of things were to find itself inverted and the great channels of communication between places were to be narrowed and barred in their most important passages?

Such are the principles from which justice and conscience do not allow us to depart; but at the same time we must recognize that natural law offers no means for establishing a precise limit which can apply in all cases. Hence this divergence of opinion which is manifest among authors on a subject into which each one naturally carries his national or personal tendencies in favor of a servitude or in favor of the liberty of the seas. The wiser writers have ex

pressed the wish that the nations agree in establishing a general rule which would, after all, be only a temporary solution susceptible of variation and revision. To speak only of the system which seems to marshal in its favor the greatest number of opinions among modern publicists, we find this to be the range of a cannon shot from the shore. If it is at the range of cannon that the zone of defense or the width of the territorial sea is to be delimited, will not the improvements made daily in this formidable art of artillery modify in the future the limit of the imaginary line which is thus drawn upon the seas?

CREASY: First Platform of International Law. London, 1876.

Page 232-240. Such is the law of Nations as to the Ocean, the mare vastum, the open sea. But those portions of the sea, which are land-locked, and almost inclosed within the territories of a State. which are intra fauces terræ, as the phrase is, are clearly within the exclusive territorial jurisdiction of the State whose lands gird them round. In the case also of bays, or portions of sea not so completely enclosed, but which lie within a clear and well-defined concave curve, the base of which is a line drawn from one promontory, or other excrescence of the land, to another, the State, whose territories thus clasp these oceanic waters, claims and exercises exclusive jurisdiction over them. Such bays are called by British writers "The King's Chambers." According to some writers there is a limitation of distance as to the width of the bays over which such exclusive jurisdiction may be claimed. It ought not in their judgment to be allowed if the distance from horn to horn of the bay is more than twice the range of cannon-shot. But the present tendency of writers on the subject is to extend the privilege to much ampler bays. Chancellor Kent tells us that the United States "have a right to claim for fiscal and defensive regulations a liberal extension of maritime jurisdiction; and it would not be unreasonable, as I apprehend, to assume for domestic purposes connected with our safety and our welfare, the control of the waters on our coasts, though included within lines stretching from quite distant headlands, as, for instance, from Cape Ann to Cape Cod, and from Nantucket to Montauch Point, and from that point to the Capes of the Delaware, and from the South Cape of Florida to the Mississippi."

241. In the case of every nation whose territory abuts on the sea. such nation has a right to preclude Belligerent Powers from carrying on hostilities upon the open sea within a certain distance of its coast. That distance is judged of with reference to the range of artillery.