Opinion of the Court. the United States, and the steamer being upon navigable waters, it is deemed to be within the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States. It was, therefore, perfectly competent for Congress to enact that parties on board committing an assault with a dangerous weapon should be punished when brought within the jurisdiction of the District Court of the United States. But it will hardly be claimed that Congress by the legislation in question intended that violent assaults committed upon persons on vessels owned by citizens of the United States in the Detroit River, without the jurisdiction of any particular State, should be punished, and that similar offences upon persons on vessels of like owners upon the adjoining lakes should be unprovided for. If the law can be deemed applicable to offences committed on vessels in any navigable river, haven, creek, basin, or bay, connecting with the lakes, out of the jurisdiction of any particular State, it would not be reasonable to suppose that Congress intended that no remedy should be afforded for similar offences committed on vessels upon the lakes, to which the vessels on the river, in almost all instances, are directed, and upon whose waters they are to be chiefly engaged. The more reasonable inference is that Congress intended to include the open, unenclosed waters of the lakes under the designation of high seas. The term, in the eye of reason, is applicable to the open, unenclosed portion of all large bodies of navigable waters, whose extent cannot be measured by one's vision, and the navigation of which is free to all nations and people on their borders, by whatever names those bodies may be locally designated. In some countries small lakes are called seas, as in the case of the Sea of Galilee, in Palestine. In other countries large bodies of water, greater than many bodies denominated seas, are called lakes, gulfs, or basins. The nomenclature, however, does not change the real character of either, nor should it affect our construction of terms properly applicable to the waters of either. By giving to the term "high seas" the construction indicated, there is consistency and sense in the whole statute, but there is neither if it be disregarded. If the term applies to the open, unenclosed waters of the lakes, the appli Opinion of the Court. cation of the legislation to the case under indictment cannot be questioned, for the Detroit River is a water connecting such high seas, and all that portion which is north of the boundary line between the United States and Canada is without the jurisdiction of any State of the Union. But if they be considered as not thus applying, it is difficult to give any force to the rest of the statute without supposing that Congress intended to provide against violence on board of vessels in navigable rivers, havens, creeks, basins, and bays, without the jurisdiction of any particular State, and intentionally omitted the much more important provision for like violence and disturbances on vessels upon the Great Lakes. All vessels in any navigable river, haven, creek, basin, or bay of the lakes, whether within or without the jurisdiction of any particular State, would some time find their way upon the waters of the lakes; and it is not a reasonable inference that Congress intended that the law should apply to offences only on a limited portion of the route over which the vessels were expected to pass, and that no provision should be made for such offences over a much greater distance on the lakes. Congress in thus designating the open, unenclosed portion of large bodies of water, extending beyond one's vision, naturally used the same term to indicate it as was used with reference to similar portions of the ocean or of bodies which had been designated as seas. When Congress, in 1790, first used that term the existence of the Great Lakes was known; they had been visited by great numbers of persons in trading with the neighboring Indians, and their immense extent and character were generally understood. Much more accurate was this knowledge when the act of March 3, 1825, was passed, 4 Stat. 115, c. 65, and when the provisions of section 5346 were reënacted in the Revised Statutes in 1874. In all these cases, when Congress provided for the punishment of violence on board of vessels, it must have intended that the provision should extend to vessels on those waters the same as to vessels on seas, technically so called. There were no bodies of water in the United States to any portion of which the term "high seas" was applicable if not to the open, Opinion of the Court. unenclosed waters of the Great Lakes. It does not seem reasonable to suppose that Congress intended to confine its legislation to the high seas of the ocean, and to its navigable rivers, havens, creeks, basins, and bays, without the jurisdiction of any State, and to make no provision for offences on those vast bodies of inland waters of the United States. There are vessels of every description on those inland seas now carrying on a commerce greater than the commerce on any other inland seas of the world. And we cannot believe that the Congress of the United States purposely left for a century those who navigated and those who were conveyed in vessels upon those seas without any protection. The statute under consideration provides that every person who, upon the high seas or in any river connecting with them, as we construe its language, within the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States, and out of the jurisdiction of any particular State, commits, on board of any vessel belonging in whole or in part to the United States, or any citizen thereof, an assault on another with a dangerous weapon or with intent to perpetrate a felony, shall be punished, etc. The Detroit River, from shore to shore, is within the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States, and connects with the open waters of the lakes - high seas, as we hold them to be, within the meaning of the statute. From the boundary line, near its centre, to the Canadian shore it is out of the jurisdiction of the State of Michigan. The case presented is therefore directly within its provisions. The act of Congress of September 4, 1890, 26 Stat. 424, c. 874, (1 Sup. to the Rev. Stat. chap. 874, p. 799,) providing for the punishment of crimes. subsequently committed on the Great Lakes, does not, of course, affect the construction of the law previously existing. We are not unmindful of the fact that it was held by the Supreme Court of Michigan in People v. Tyler, 7 Michigan, 161, that the criminal jurisdiction of the Federal courts did. not extend to offences committed upon vessels on the lakes. The judges who rendered that decision were able and distinguished; but that fact, whilst it justly calls for a careful consideration of their reasoning, does not render their conclu Opinion of the Court. sion binding or authoritative upon this court. this court. Their opinions show that they did not accept the doctrine extending the admiralty jurisdiction to cases on the lakes and navigable rivers, which is now generally, we might say almost universally, received as sound by the judicial tribunals of the country. It is true, as there stated, that, as a general principle, the criminal laws of a nation do not operate beyond its territorial limits, and that to give any government, or its judicial tribunals, the right to punish any act or transaction as a crime, it must have occurred within those limits. We accept this doctrine as a general rule, but there are exceptions to it as fully recognized as the doctrine itself. One of those exceptions is that offences committed upon vessels belonging to citizens of the United States, within their admiralty jurisdiction, (that is, within navigable waters,) though out of the territorial limits of the United States, may be judicially considered when the vessel and parties are brought within their territorial jurisdiction. As we have before stated, a vessel is deemed part of the territory of the country to which she belongs. Upon that subject we quote the language of Mr. Webster, while Secretary of State, in his letter to Lord Ashburton of August, 1842. Speaking for the government of the United States, he stated with great clearness and force the doctrine which is now recognized by all countries. He said: "It is natural to consider the vessels of a nation as parts of its territory, though at sea, as the State retains its jurisdiction over them; and, according to the commonly received custom, this jurisdiction is preserved over the vessels even in parts of the sea subject to a foreign dominion. This is the doctrine of the law of nations, clearly laid down by writers of received authority, and entirely conformable, as it is supposed, with the practice of modern nations. If a murder be committed on board of an American vessel by one of the crew upon another or upon a passenger, or by a passenger on one of the crew or another passenger, while such vessel is lying in a port within the jurisdiction of a foreign State or sovereignty, the offence is cognizable and punishable by the proper court of the United States in the same manner as if such offence had Opinion of the Court. been committed on board the vessel on the high seas. The law of England is supposed to be the same. It is true that the jurisdiction of a nation over a vessel belonging to it, while lying in the port of another, is not necessarily wholly exclusive. We do not so consider or so assert it. For For any unlawful acts done by her while thus lying in port, and for all contracts entered into while there, by her master or owners, she and they must, doubtless, be answerable to the laws of the place. Nor, if her master or crew, while on board in such port, break the peace of the community by the commission of crimes, can exemption be claimed for them. But, nevertheless, the law of nations, as I have stated it, and the statutes of governments founded on that law, as I have referred to them, show that enlightened nations, in modern times, do clearly hold that the jurisdiction and laws of a nation accompany her ships not only over the high seas, but into ports and harbors, or wheresoever else they may be water-borne, for the general purpose of governing and regulating the rights, duties, and obligations of those on board thereof, and that, to the extent of the exercise of this jurisdiction, they are considered as parts of the territory of the nation herself." 6 Webster's Works, 306, 307. We do not accept the doctrine that, because by the treaty between the United States and Great Britain the boundary line between the two countries is run through the centre of the lakes, their character as seas is changed, or that the jurisdiction of the United States to regulate vessels belonging to their citizens navigating those waters and to punish offences committed upon such vessels, is in any respect impaired. Whatever effect may be given to the boundary line between the two countries, the jurisdiction of the United States over the vessels of their citizens navigating those waters and the persons on board remains unaffected. The limitation to the jurisdiction by the qualification that the offences punishable are committed on vessels in any arm of the sea, or in any river, haven, creek, basin, or bay "without the jurisdiction of any particular State," which means without the jurisdiction of any State of the Union, does not apply to vessels on the "high |