It will be observed that the _Mare Liberum_ was written to refute the unjustified claims of Spain and Portugal to the high seas and to exclude foreigners therefrom. The claims of England, less extensive but not less unjustifiable, were not mentioned, and yet, if the arguments of Grotius were sound, the English claims to the high seas to the south and east of England, as well as to undefined regions to the north and west, would likewise fall to the ground. Therefore the distinguished English lawyer, scholar, and publicist, John Selden by name, bestirred himself in behalf of his country and wrote his _Mare Clausum_ in 1617 or 1618, although it was not published until 1635, to refute the little tractate, _Mare Liberum_.[E] In the dedication to King Charles I, Selden said: “There are among foreign writers, who rashly attribute your Majesty’s more southern and eastern sea to their princes. Nor are there a few, who following chiefly some of the ancient Caesarian lawyers, endeavor to affirm, or beyond reason too easily admit, that all seas are common to the universality of mankind.” The thesis of Selden was twofold: first, “that the sea, by the law of nature or nations, is not common to all men, but capable of private dominion or property as well as the land”; second, “that the King of Great Britain is lord of the sea flowing about, as an inseparable and perpetual appendant of the British Empire.” In this battle of books, to use the happy expression of Professor Nys, the Dutch Scholar has had the better of his English antagonist. If it cannot be said that Grotius wears his learning “lightly like a flower”, the treatise of Selden is, in comparison, over-freighted with it; the _Mare Liberum_ is still an open book, the _Mare Clausum_ is indeed a closed one, and as flotsam or jetsam on troubled waters, Chapter XII of the Law of Prize rides the waves, whereas its rival, heavy and water-logged, has gone under. In the leading case of The Louis (2 Dodson 210), decided in 1817, some two hundred years after Selden’s book was written, Sir William Scott, later Lord Stowell and one of Selden’s most distinguished countrymen, said, in rejecting the claim of his country to the exercise of jurisdiction beyond a marine league from the British shore: I have to observe, that two principles of public law are generally recognized as fundamental. One is the perfect equality and entire independence of all distinct states. Relative magnitude creates no distinction of right; relative imbecility, whether permanent or casual, gives no additional right to the more powerful neighbor; and any advantage seized upon that ground is mere usurpation. This is the great foundation of public law, which it mainly concerns the peace of mankind, both in their politic and private capacities, to preserve inviolate.