'Muscat Dhows Arbitration. In the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. Grant of the French Flag to Muscat Dhows. The case on behalf of the Government of His Britannic Majesty.' [‎15v] (39/208)

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unless at least half the vessel is owned by French
citizens. And Article XXXII of the Brussels Act
cannot be interpreted as extending or giving any
wider scope to these laws. That Article recognizes
the principle that it would be an abuse to grant
the national flag indiscriminately to native vessels,
and operates to restrict internationally the right
of Powers which have accepted it to cover by their
flag native craft in the Indian Seas, and is Foreign Offioe to
obviously aimed at preventing the very mischief 8*i e 902. OVember
created by the practices detailed on pp. of this jg v ^Q| pteinber
Case. In other words, the aim of the Article was
to insure that no native vessel should fly the flag of
a Signatory Power unless it satisfied the conditions
laid down in the Article, and that native vessels
which were not, by reason of the status of their
owners as actual subjects or bond fide proteges of a
Signatory Power, should have to resort to the flag
of any of the native States to which their owners
belonged. The effect of the action of French
officials has been to enable Arabs of independ
ent States or tribes not belonging to any
French Colony or Protectorate to wrap them
selves in the tricolour, and thereby to claim the
right to escape on the high seas from search
under Article XLII of the Brussels Act, and in
the waters, or in the territory, of the State to
which they belonged, notwithstanding the saving
clause in that Article, to claim exterritoriality and
independence of their own lawful Sovereign, and
to defeat his efforts to enforce his own laws and
Treaty obligations to suppress their nefarious
occupation.
The saving clause in Article XLII of the
Brussels Act expresses the universally established
rule of international law as to the jurisdiction of
a State within its own territorial waters.
It is idle to contend that France, by reserving
her assent to the Article, has given herself larger
powers of police and surveillance in the waters of
other States than would be acquired by those
Powers which have accepted Article XLII, and
it is to be further noted that Muscat not being a
party to the Brussels Act, France cannot, by
virtue of these Articles of the Act which she has
accepted, claim the exercise of any rights in the
dominions or territorial waters of the Sultan,
whose obligations, always fully recognized to
suppress the Slave Trade, are defined by the
Treaties with Great Britian already referred to, Appendix,
and not by the Brussels Act.