Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/501

 CENTRAL I R. CO. . JERSEY CITY. 47 jurisdiction is diminished by the provision that such vessels shall be subject to the quarantine or health laws and laws in relation to passengers of the State of New York, and the right to regulate fisheries cannot be exercised so as to hinder or obstruct navigation. Mr. Waen Dixon for defendants in error: It is the settled law of the State of New Jersey that lands under water within the state limits o 'nginally belonged to the State, and that title by holders other than the State is acquired from the State. The title to lands under water within the present limits of the State were vested in the King of Great Britain at and before the Revolution of 1776, and became vested by the law of nations and by the right of con- quest in the people of the then Colony and now State of New Peters, 367; Aro/d v. Mnday, 1 Halstead, 1; Stevens v. Rail- road Co., 5 Vroom, 540; McCready v. Virginia, 94 U.S. 91. The State of New Jersey was seized in fee simple absolute in the soil covered by the waters of the Hudson River; and the said lands, being within the boundaries of the said State, were subject only to the paramount easement of navigation and to the power of re/,lating such easoment' poesessed by the Uni- ted States. The State of New Jersey has always claimed ownership of the lands under water out to the middle of the Hudson River and the Bay of New York. By the law of nations wl/ere an arm o! the sea or a river is the boundary between two nations or states, if the original right of jurisdiction is in neither, in the absence of any con- vention respecting it, each holds to the middle of the stream. Angell on Tide-waters, p. 7; Vattel, B. 1, e. 22, �6; Marten, B. 4, e. 3, 4, 5. Article 4 of the compact between the States of New York and New Jersey, as construed by the courts, gives to New York merely the power of executing its quarantine law and laws re-

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