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The Literature of International Relations
of the sea, unless they submit, and yield such obedience, and make such repair, as you shall approve of. But yet notwithstanding, albeit the said dominion of the sea be so ancient and indubitable, and concerneth the honour and reputation of this nation to uphold the same, we should not for all that, that you should in this expedition engage the fleet in any peril or hazard for that particular; so that if it should in this expedition happen, you should be opposed therein by such a considerable force, as the same might prove dangerous, then to forbear the pressing thereof, and take notice, who they were that did it not, that at some better opportunity they may be brought hereafter thereunto.'[1]
But the claim to the dominion of the sea was very far from being a spent one,[2] and Boroughs's little book deservedly ranks
- ↑ Thurloe, State Papers, i. 135.
- ↑ Two interesting pamphlets bearing on the foundations of the claim and on its vicissitudes in the reign of Charles II are reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. vii (1810)—The Dutch Usurpation … and A Justification of the Present War against the United Netherlands, Wherein … the Dominion of the Sea [is] explained, and his Majesty's Rights thereunto asserted. Both were printed first in 1672. For a valuable enunciation of modern principles touching the general question of the freedom of the sea and maritime rights, the historical student should read the judgement of Sir William Scott, Lord Stowell, in the case of Le Louis, December 15, 1817: Dodson, Reports of Cases argued and determined in the High Court of Admiralty, ii. (1828), pp. 210–64 (Judgment, pp. 236–64). Dodson, for the appellant in the case, said of 'the empire of the seas, in the modern acceptation of the term', that it does not imply any exclusive legal privileges, and that the only meaning that can justly be assigned to it is, that in time of war the nation possessing it has a perfect mastery over the fleets of the enemy, and can secure to itself all the important advantages arising from such superiority, but that in time of peace it confers no peculiar privilege. In the course of his argument he cited Vasquius, Welwod, and Vattel as authorities. On the subject of the dominion of the sea in the limited and technical sense which Selden, Boroughs, and others contended for in the seventeenth century, Lord Stowell touched to the extent of the following words: 'It is true, that wild claims … have been occasionally set up by nations, particularly those of Spain and Portugal, in the East
