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Show -21- SOVEREIGN RIGHTS AND RELATIONS IN THE CONTROL AND USE OF AMERICAN WATERS* ERNEST C. CARMAN** PART II Having examined sovereign rights and relations of the American States in the control and use of -their waterways up to the formation of the Union, it; will be in order now to take up and trace chronologically, but by convenient spans or periods of time, the development of those sovereign rights and rela- tions under the federal constitution* First in importance are treaties and other dealings with foreign powers under which water rights and the territory of the Union were alike expanded, and under which the benefits and. burdens of international law (equally "bind- ing upon the States and the United States) were claimed and accepted; next, compacts and agreements among the States, and also between States and the United States; and- finally the judicial decision of controversies between the States. Since each State has always proceeded under a written state con- stitution, published to the world and therefore a continuing notice to all the other States of all limitations so written against the powers. of the state government, it wi11 be proper to notice the provisions of the several state constitutions relating to water rights 4& And since, every enabling act of Congress for the admission of any new Stato into the Union, if not in confD ict with the federal constitution, upon its acceptance by the proposed State- be- came a compact between that State and the United States, the federal enabling legislation and the approving provisions of state constitutions or other fund- amental laws will be here scrutinized, if relating to the use or control of ** (Of the Los Angeles Bar.) * (Continued from the December, 1929* issue; consult, supra, page CI4.; Part III will be published in the April, 1930 issue.) There are no such provisions in the constitutions of the original States as existing or adopted upon the formation of the Union*' However, when the Revolution took place, the people of each State became themselves sovereign, and,in that character held absolute rights to all their navigable waters a.nd the underlying soil, for their own national use. These public rights hnd their foundation in the English Magna Carta, subject to which all grants by British Kings of soil and dominion on this continent were made. Martin v. Waddell's Lessee, 16 Pet, (U.S.)'367, 10 L. £d. 99? (181)2); see also, 3 Rose's Notes on United States Reports, 693* where many judicial decisions are comment- ed on« ' There is also an inherent public right by common law or colonial ordinance in "great ponds" in some of the New England States,- For early colonial acts in Massachusetts declaring "great ponds" 'to be public'property not -grant afcde to any individual, see West Roxbury v. Stoddard, 7 Allen (Mass.) 158 (186j5)* Attorney General v. Revere Copper Co., 152 Mass, fji.^, 25 N.E« 6C5, 9 L.R.A. 510 (1890); Watuppa Reservoir Co, v. Fall River, I5IJ. Mass. 305, 28 N.E. 2^7, 13 L.R.A. 255 (1891). * |