Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/505

This page needs to be proofread.

moment that New Jersey sold the land. We repeat that bound- ary means sovereignty, since in modern times sovereignty is mainly territorial, unless a different meaning clearly appears.. It is said that a different meaning doe? appear in the Article (III) that gives New York exclusive jurisdiction over this land as well as the water above it. But we agree with the state courts that have been called on to construe that part of the agreement that the purpose was to promote the interes? of commerce and navigation, not to take back the sovereignty that otherwise was the consequence of Article I. This is the view of the New York as well as of the New Jersey Court oi Errors and Appeals, and it would be a strange result if this court should be driven to a different conclusion from that N.Y. 459, 463; Peopl? v. Central R. R. Co., 42 N.Y. 283. This opinion is confirmed by the judgment delivered by one of the commissioners in State v. Babcock, 1 Vroom, 29. Again, as was pointed out by the state court, the often expressed purpc? of the appointment of the commissioner and of the agreement to settle the territorial llm?.'ts and jurisdiction must mes? by territorial limits sovereignty, and by jurisdiction something less. It is suggested that jurisdiction is used in a broader dense in the second article, and that may be true so far as concerns Bedlow's and Ellis Islands. But the provision there is that New York shall retain its "present" jurisdiction over them, and ?ould seem on its face simply to be intended to preserve the ?atuz quo ante, whatever it. may be. Throughout nearly all the article? of the agreement, other _th?n those in ?ontroversy, t?ie wo?d ?risdiction obviously is used in a more lhnited sense. The word has occurred in other c?es where a river was a boundary, and in the Vir?nla COm- p?t was held to mean, primarily at least, Jurisdictio, authority U.S. 573, 584. Whether in the case at bar some power of police regulation also was conferred upon New York, as held in F?guzon v. Ross, need not be decided now. That New Jersey