Samuel Blatchford

“ If there be a liberty of fishing for swimming fish in the navigable waters of the United States common to the inhabitants or the citizens of the United States, (upon which we express no opinion,) the statute may well be considered as an impartial and reasonable regulation of this liberty; and the sujec t is one which a state may well be permitted to regulate within its territory, in the absence of any regulation by the United States. The preservation of fish, even although they are not used as food for human beings, but as food for other fish, which are so used, is for the common benefit ”

“ Therefore, if Massachusetts had continued to be an independent nation, her boundaries on the sea, as defined by her statutes, would unquestionably be acknowledged by all foreign nations, and her right to control the fisheries within those boundaries would be conceded. The limits of the right of a nation to control the fisheries on its seacoasts, and in the bays and srms of the sea within its territory, have never been placed at less than a marine league from the coast on the open sea ”

“ Within what are generally recognized as the territorial limits of states by the law of nations, a state can define its boundaries on the sea and the boundaries of its counties; and by this test the commonwealth of Massachusetts can include Buzzard's bay within the limits of its counties. The statutes of Massachusetts, in regard to bays at least, make definite boundaries which, before the passage of the statutes, were somewhat indefinite ”