In this case, on land as well as at sea, the immunity of private property, as a general rule, during war, may be supposed to be outweighed by the conflicting rule that trade with an enemy is unlawful. This rule, however, has of late been very partially acted upon, and appears to be singularly absurd. It is unfortunately necessary that, in endeavouring to injure an enemy during war, a nation should do much that will more or less injure itself. But the idea of a rule upon which it is absolutely impossible for a nation to act without inflicting in every instance precisely the same amount of injury upon itself as it inflicts upon the enemy, is simply ridiculous. The blunder had doubtless its origin in the old notion that the export trade of a country is more valuable to it than its import trade. To seize a cargo of French goods bound for an English market causes to England precisely the same loss as it causes to France. Those goods (unless we are to suppose that they are sent to England for the mere chance of a market) are ordered and must be paid for-they may possibly have been already paid for-by an English merchant; and the loss is no more French than it is English. It would be a strange kind of warfare which should be carried on between two countries with the certain knowledge that it could by no possibility in any length of time give any advantage either to one side or to the other.

Is there, then, any valid distinction between private property at sea and private property on land which would make reasonable the exemption of the former, and the non-exemption of the latter, from plunder during war? So far as the goods of an enemy are concerned, it is impossible to discover any such distinction. It has sometimes been contended that the immunity of private property on land is not founded on any general principle of international equity or humanity, but is a matter of military expediency, the disadvantage to the plundering army from the exasperation of the occupants of the

country being greater than its advantage from the plunder. But this assertion, besides being contrary to the facts of the case (for it is certain that no general serving a civilized State could allow his troops to plunder in an enemy's country without being held guilty, not of bad generalship, but of moral delinquency), is obviously inapplicable to the exemption from injury by a naval force of a commercial seaport town. As regards the ships and their crews, the case is different. It is argued, and with some reason, that the merchant ships of an enemy, with their crews, are the "raw material" of his military marine, and that to capture them is directly to cripple his naval power; so directly, at least, as to bring their capture fairly within the category of hostile measures which may be taken against him. This cannot be said of private property, or of private persons taken on land. Indirectly, no doubt, to seize the private property of an enemy's subjects on land, or to seize the subjects themselves, though engaged in peaceful occupations, tends to diminish his military power; but it does this so indirectly as to have become in modern times unlawful.

It may be admitted, then, that with respect to the ships and crews of an enemy there is at present a not unfair reason for treating them as liable to capture, which reason does not exist in the case of private property on land. It is a reason, however, of which the force has been much diminished by the recent inventions of science, and will be more and more diminished as the difference between a merchant vessel and a vessel of war, both as to construction and as to the qualities required for its navigation, becomes more and more marked. As regards the goods of an enemy being private property, and on the high seas, there is absolutely no such reason. Consistency requires that such goods should be exempt from capture, and that if found on board enemy's ships they should be restored to their

owners.

The admission, implied in the immu

nity accorded to private property on land, of the principle upon which it is proposed to extend that immunity to private property at sea renders it practically unnecessary to discuss the justice or expediency of that principle. But it is to be observed, that there is much stronger reason for exempting an enemy's goods from plunder at sea, as well as on land when in transitu, than for so exempting them in his own country. Such goods, if they are bound for a neutral country, are, in a certain sense, the property of persons in that country; and to subject them to capture is, to that important extent, a direct and flagrant interference with the obvious rights of neutrals. It is, in fact, a denial to neutrals of the power of trading, so far as their imports are concerned, with a belligerent State; and this, not for any military purpose, but for the sake of the mere injury to the enemy's trade. Such a prohibition is opposed to the plainest dictates of equity. That either of two nations, which for any cause, however frivolous, should think fit to go to war with each other, should have power to intercept the trade of the other with countries which are friendly to it, unjustifiable from the first, has become simply intolerable now that commercial intercourse has been freed from most of its trammels and nations are for the most part dependant upon each other for the comforts and necessaries of life. That the Northern States of America, because they happen to have a quarrel with the Southern States, should have had the power-not incidentally upon the necessary operations of war, but deliberately and directly to cut off from England supplies necessary to the existence of a great part of her population, is in accordance certainly with international law, but in complete opposition to reason. and right.

It appears then, from what has been said, that the rule of international law which subjects the private property of an enemy to capture at sea ought to be reversed; but that for the present, at least, an exception to the general immu

nity might not unjustly be made in the case of an enemy's ships and their crews. Thus the goods of an enemy would be free in whatever ships they were conveyed; while his ships, with their crews, would still remain liable to capture.

As regards the effect of such a change upon the interests of merchants and shipowners it has been seen that by the Declaration of Paris, the trade of neutrals has been (so far as maritime capture is concerned) already in practice set free; because, unless carried in enemy's ships, enemy's goods are no longer liable to capture. To the mercantile, as distinct from the shipping interest, in belligerent States which have assented to that Declaration, the change would therefore be of far less importance than it would have been before the Declaration. It would, nevertheless, be a measure of great importance to that interest, not only as placing at its disposal the national mercantile marine, at no other disadvantage, when compared with neutral shipping, than the loss and inconvenience of delay in case the ship were captured, but as establishing on an intelligible and rational basis the freedom of private property from plunder during war. As respects the shipowners of a belligerent State, the change would at once remove in great part an objection which has been earnestly pressed on behalf of British shipping to the Declaration of Paris, viz. that, in the event of England being engaged in war, its effect will be to throw the carrying trade of the country into the hands of neutrals. That objection, which is avowedly based on the interest of one particular industry, is obviously inadmissible as an argument against a measure intended for the advantage of the State as a whole, and of the general community of nations. Nor does it appear at all clear that, on the whole, the alteration effected by the Declaration of Paris would be injurious to that industry. By the change, however, now proposed the objection must in a great measure be obviated, since the main

object of the complainants-the equal treatment of an enemy's goods, whether conveyed in his own ships or in those of a neutral-would be attained. There would remain the comparatively small disadvantage, on the side of the ships of a belligerent, of the temporary detention of the enemy's goods which they conveyed.

With respect to blockade, the law, which in principle remained unaltered by the Declaration of Paris, seems in its present condition singularly indefensible.

There is no general rule of international law more clearly established than this-that a neutral has the right of trading on his own account with either belligerent during war. Sir R. Phillimore, in his "Commentaries on International Law," says:

"There is no more unquestionable proposition of International Law than the proposition that neutral states are entitled to carry on, upon their own account, a trade with a belligerent."

and whoever will refer to the principal authorities on the subject will find the statement amply confirmed. Great

Britain, he goes on to say, has in two or three instances attempted to enforce a contrary doctrine; but in the first of those instances Great Britain, with her accomplice Holland, afterwards confessed that she was wrong; and in the other two she rested her case, such as it was, upon a highly exceptional state of things, which was held to warrant a temporary departure from that which she admitted to be a general principle of law.

But to this rule there are necessary exceptions; and one of these is "the right,"as Sir R. Phillimore expresses it,

to prohibit the commerce of the neu"tral with all besieged and blockaded "places; and the duty of the neutral "to abstain from all intercourse with "them." Now what is the ground on

1 Wheaton expresses it as follows:"Another exception to the general freedom of neutral commerce in time of war is to be found in the trade to ports or places besieged or blockaded by one of the belligerent powers." (Part iv. c. 3).

which this exception is justifiable? Simply the necessity of allowing nations which are at war to carry on against each other military operations, among which is the siege or investment of ports or places belonging to the enemy. There are military operations in which it is an object to cut off the supply of provisions or munitions of war from the enemy; and these operations, if nations are permitted to make war upon each other at all, they cannot be prevented from conducting, notwithstanding that in so doing they are acting in opposition to the general rule. In other words, the case is one in which the admitted right of neutrals to trade with a belligerent conflicts with and is made inoperative by the admitted right of belligerents to carry on hostile operations against each other. Such being the case, it is surprising that the right of excluding the commerce of neutrals by blockade should have been considered to hold good where the blockade is what is termed "commercial"—that is, where it is established for the express and single object of excluding that commerce, and not for any purpose which can be termed military. To say that neutrals have a right to trade with a belligerent, and at the same time to say that a belligerent may place at the entrance of any port of the enemy an armed force, for the sole and ultimate object of preventing neutrals from trading with him, is a mere contradiction in terms. In the case of a military blockade, the exclusion of neutral commerce is a secondary object: the ultimate object is to gain a military advantage. The secondary object is inconsistent with the principle of law which prescribes freedom of trade between neutrals and belligerents: but the ultimate object is to do that which, in the interest of all nations, belligerents are authorised to do during war; and this last consideration prevails. In the case of a "commercial" blockade, the ultimate object is to exclude the trade of neutrals, i.e., to do the very thing which the law of nations proclaims to be illegal. There is no conflict in this

case of principles or of rights. The thing done is done in simple and direct contravention of a great legal principle, and not in virtue of any other legal principle which conflicts with it. To lay down the general proposition that the trade of neutrals with belligerents is free, and at the same time to legalise "commercial" blockades, is as absurd as it would be to say that a man has no right to take the law into his own hands, but that any man may on any occasion knock another man down. Either, then, the general rule must be reversed, or the exception, so for as it respects "commercial" blockades, must cease. Happily, there seems no sort of probability that the former alternative will be adopted. It is not in that, but in the opposite direction, that future changes in the law of nations must be expected to tend. The monstrous doctrine which has been already referred to, that either of two nations which choose to quarrel with each other may intercept the trade of the other with a friendly state, having once been shattered, to the extent of allowing neutral goods to be freely conveyed to the enemy, it is not likely that the breach will ever be repaired.

Thus far with respect to "commercial" blockade, considered as excluding the merchandise of neutrals from the ports of the hostile country. Considered as preventing the egress of enemy's goods, it is open to precisely the same objections as those which have been urged in this paper to the capture of an enemy's goods at sea. It is equally irreconcileable with the recognised immunity of private property on land, and, as giving to any two quarrelsome nations an undue power of injuring third countries, equally opposed to the dictates of common sense and common humanity. And it is open to these objections in a degree by so much the greater, as blockade is a more effective instrument than maritime capture for the suppression of trade.

In so far, again, as commercial blockade operates to prevent the interchange of commodities between the belligerent

countries, it is liable to the same objection as that above noticed, to the legal theory by which such a trade is prohibited. In this effect of it, commercial blockade cannot under any conceivable circumstances be of any possible advantage either to one side or to the other.

A blockade, then, to be, as it is termed, "binding," ought not only (in the words of the Declaration of Paris) to be "effective," but established for military purposes. And it ought to be so, not in any vague or indirect manner, but directly and in the fullest sense part of a strategic plan. That no consideration as to its indirect effect in diminishing the enemy's military power by cutting off from his people their sources of wealth, is sufficient to justify blockade, is implied in the very rule which allows neutrals to trade with him. A blockade, to constitute an exception to this rule, should be clearly shown to have for its object direct military disadvantage to the enemy, or, in other words, direct military advantage to the blockading State. Thus a blockade forming part of a plan of siege or investment, or for the purpose of preventing supplies from reaching a hostile army, or intended to prevent the egress of, or to injure in any manner consistent with the laws of war, an enemy's fleet, would be entitled to observance by neutral States. As to what did or did not constitute a "military" blockade, within the meaning of the rule, difficulties would, of course, arise; but there is no reason to suppose that they would be either greater or more numerous than those which attend the interpretation of many other rules of international law.

The assertion that the abolition of "commercial" blockades would be unfairly disadvantageous to this country, as a great maritime power, is open to much discussion. It is surely matter for doubt whether the profit which England would derive from it as a neutral State with the greatest commercial navy in the world, would not exceed any loss which it would inflict upon her as a belligerent State with the greatest military navy in the world;-for doubt, which the