recognizes any specified relation between the concavity of the bay and the requirements for control by the territorial sovereignty, this Tribunal is unable to qualify by the application of any new principle its interpretation of the Treaty of 1818 as excluding bays in general from the strict and systematic application of the three mile rule; nor can this Tribunal take cognizance in this connection of other principles concerning the territorial sovereignty over bays such as ten mile or twelve mile limits of exclusion based on international acts subsequent to the Treaty of 1818 and relating to coasts of a different configuration and conditions of a different character;

(b) Because the opinion of jurists and publicists quoted in the proceedings conduce to the opinion that speaking generally the three mile rule should not be strictly and systematically applied to bays;

(c) Because the treaties referring to these coasts, antedating the Treaty of 1818, made special provisions as to bays, such as the Treaties of 1686 and 1713 between Great Britain and France, and especially the Treaty of 1778 between the United States and France. Likewise Jay's Treaty of 1794, Art. 25, distinguished bays from the space "within cannon-shot of the coast" in regard to the right of seizure in times of war. If the proposed Treaty of 1806 and the Treaty of 1818 contained no disposition to that effect, the explanation may be found in the fact that the first extended the marginal belt to five miles, and also in the circumstance that the American proposition of 1818 in that respect was not limited to "bays" but extended to "chambers formed by headlands" and to "five marine miles from a right line from one headland to another," a proposition which in the times of the Napoleonic wars would have effected to a very large extent the operations of the British Navy;

(d) Because it has not been shown by the documents and correspondence in evidence here that the application of the three mile rule to bays was present to the minds of the negotiators in 1818 and they could not reasonably have been expected either to presume it or to provide against its presumption;

(e) Because it is difficult to explain the words in Art. III of

the treaty under interpretation "country . . . together with its bays, harbours and creeks" otherwise than that all bays without distinction as to their width were, in the opinion of the negotiators, part of the territory;

(f) Because from the information before this Tribunal it is evident that the three mile rule is not applied to bays strictly or systematically either by the United States or by any other Power;

(g) It has been recognized by the United States that bays stand apart, and that in respect of them territorial jurisdiction may be exercised farther than the marginal belt in the case of Delaware Bay by the report of the United States Attorney General of May 19th, 1793; and the letter of Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Genet of November 8th, 1793 declares the bays of the United States generally to be, "as being landlocked, within the body of the United States."

5°. In this latter regard it is further contended by the United States, that such exceptions only should be made from the application of the three mile rule to bays as are sanctioned by conventions and established usage; that all exceptions for which the United States of America were responsible are so sanctioned; and that His Majesty's Government are unable to provide evidence to show that the bays concerned by the Treaty of 1818 could be claimed as exceptions on these grounds either generally, or except possibly in one or two cases, specifically.

But the Tribunal while recognizing that conventions and established usage might be considered as the basis for claiming as territorial those bays which on this ground might be called historic bays, and that such claim should be held valid in the absence of any principle of international law on the subject; nevertheless is unable to apply this, a contrario, so as to subject the bays in question to the three mile rule, as desired by the United States;

(a) Because Great Britain has during this controversy as

serted a claim to these bays generally, and has enforced such claim specifically in statutes or otherwise, in regard to the more important bays such as Chaleurs, Conception, and Miramichi;

(b) Because neither should such relaxations of this claim, as are in evidence, be construed as renunciations of it; nor should omissions to enforce the claim in regard to bays as to which no controversy arose, be so construed. Such a construction by this Tribunal would not only be intrinsically inequitable but internationally injurious; in that it would discourage conciliatory diplomatic transactions and encourage the assertion of extreme claims in their fullest extent;

(c) Because any such relaxations in the extreme claim of Great Britain in its international relations are compensated by recognitions of it in the same sphere by the United States; notably in relations with France for instance in 1823 when they applied to Great Britain for the protection of their fishery in the bays on the western coast of Newfoundland, whence they had been driven by French war vessels on the ground of the pretended exclusive right of the French. Though they never asserted that their fishermen had been disturbed within the three mile zone, only alleging that the disturbance had taken place in the bays, they claimed to be protected by Great Britain for having been molested in waters which were, as Mr. Rush stated, " clearly within the jurisdiction and sovereignty of Great Britain."

6°. It has been contended by the United States that the words "coasts, bays, creeks or harbours" are here used only to express different parts of the coast and are intended to express and be equivalent to the word "coast" whereby the three marine miles would be measured from the sinuosities of the coast and the renunciation would apply only to the waters of bays within three miles.

But the Tribunal is unable to agree with this contention: (a) Because it is a principle of interpretation that words in

a document ought not to be considered as being without any meaning if there is not specific evidence to that purpose and the interpretation referred to would lead to the consequence, practically of reading the words "bays, coasts and harbours" out of the treaty; so that it would read "within three miles of any of the coasts" including therein the coasts of the bays and harbours;

(b) Because the word "therein" in the proviso - "restrictions necessary to prevent their taking, drying or curing fish therein" can refer only to "bays," and not to the belt of three miles along the coast; and can be explained only on the supposition that the words "bays, creeks and harbours" are to be understood in their usual ordinary sense and not in an artificially restricted sense of bays within the three mile belt;

(c) Because the practical distinction for the purpose of this fishery between coasts and bays and the exceptional conditions pertaining to the latter has been shown from the correspondence and the documents in evidence, especially the Treaty of 1783, to have been in all probability present to the minds of the negotiators of the Treaty of 1818;

(d) Because the existence of this distinction is confirmed in the same article of the treaty by the proviso permitting the United States fishermen to enter bays for certain purposes;

(e) Because the word "coasts" is used in the plural form whereas the contention would require its use in the singular;

(f) Because the Tribunal is unable to understand the term "bays" in the renunciatory clause in other than its geographical sense, by which a bay is to be considered as an indentation of the coast, bearing a configuration of a particular character easy to determine specifically, but difficult to describe generally.

The negotiators of the Treaty of 1818 did probably not trouble themselves with subtle theories concerning the notion of "bays"; they most probably thought that everybody would know what was a bay. In this popular sense the term must be interpreted in the treaty. The interpretation must take into account all the individual circumstances which for any one of the different bays are to be appreciated, the relation of its width

to the length of penetration inland, the possibility and the necessity of its being defended by the State in whose territory it is indented; the special value which it has for the industry of the inhabitants of its shores; the distance which it is secluded from the highways of nations on the open sea and other circumstances not possible to enumerate in general.

For these reasons the Tribunal decides and awards:

In case of bays the three marine miles are to be measured from a straight line drawn across the body of water at the place where it ceases to have the configuration and characteristics of a bay. At all other places the three marine miles are to be measured following the sinuosities of the coast.

But considering the Tribunal cannot overlook that this answer to Question V, although correct in principle and the only one possible in view of the want of a sufficient basis for a more concrete answer, is not entirely satisfactory as to its practical applicability, and that it leaves room for doubts and differences in practice. Therefore the Tribunal considers it its duty to render the decision more practicable and to remove the danger of future differences by adjoining to it a recommendation in virtue of the responsibilities imposed by Art. IV of the Special Agreement.

Considering, moreover, that in treaties with France, with the North German Confederation and the German Empire and likewise in the North Sea Convention, Great Britain has adopted for similar cases the rule that only bays of ten miles width should be considered as those wherein the fishing is reserved to nationals. And that in the course of the negotiations between Great Britain and the United States a similar rule has been on various occasions proposed and adopted by Great Britain in instructions to the naval officers stationed on these coasts. And that though these circumstances are not sufficient to constitute this a principle of international law, it seems reasonable to propose this rule with certain exceptions, all the more that this rule with such exceptions has already formed the basis of an agreement between the two Powers.

Now therefore this Tribunal in pursuance of the provisions