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intercourse with neutral powers even for the most peaceful purpose, is a claim which gains no additional strength by an investigation into the foundation on which it rests, and the evils which have accompanied its exercise call for an efficient remedy. The investment of a place by sea and land with a view to its reduction, preventing it from receiving supplies of men and material necessary for its defence, is a legitimate mode of prosecuting hostilities, which cannot be objected to so long as war is required as an arbiter of national disputes. But the blockade of a coast, or of commercial positions along it, without any regard to ulterior military operations, and with the real design of carrying on a war against trade, and from its very nature against the trade of peaceful and friendly powers, instead of a war against armed men, is a proceeding which it is difficult to reconcile with reason or with the opinions of modern times. To watch every creek, and river, and harbour upon an ocean frontier, in order to seize and confiscate every vessel, with its cargo, attempting to enter or go out, without any direct effect upon the true objects of war, is a mode of conducting hostilities which would find few advocates if now first presented for consideration."

The fearful evils which the country is now suffering from the commercial blockade of the coast of the insurgent states in America, have extended to the public the interest which Mr. Cass's proposition alone would have been sufficient to excite among students of international law.

I have been obliged to come to the conclusion that commercial blockades ought to be abolished, from motives both of justice and policy: not, indeed, that we can suddenly repudiate our ancient doctrines at the moment when we begin to feel ourselves the evils which we have long inflicted on others; but our duty is to turn the present lesson to account, and use it at the first legitimate opportunity.

Under the present law of nations, neutral commerce is subject to interference from belligerents in two classes of cases

only the carriage of goods contraband of war, with those cases, as the conveyance of troops, which are analogous to contraband, and blockade. The two classes are quite distinct, both from each other and from the mutual interference to which the commerce of belligerents is subject. The abolition of commercial blockades would in no way impair the power of excluding contraband from an enemy's ports, for the vessels which carry it might be arrested under that law by the same squadron, or by the same cruisers, which now arrest them. under the law of blockade, only that squadron or those cruisers would not be paid in part by the capture of neutral vessels, engaged in what I hope to show is an intrinsically neutral trade: nor would the freedom of neutral commerce in any way involve the immunity of a single belligerent vessel, were she public property or private. And the questions of contraband and blockade, which concern neutrals, are as distinct from the third question in the arguments applicable to them as they are in their substance. The chief argument on the former must be that of justice, if not as measuring what belligerents will be disposed to inflict, yet as measuring what neutrals will ultimately submit to. The chief argument for the immunity of private belligerent property must be humanity. Policy will, of course, have to be considered on all the questions; but as none of them can be decided but by the general consent of nations, the motives of policy which specially affect a single country are likely to be less influential in their decision than the citizens of powerful countries are sometimes willing to believe. I am therefore convinced that whoever would have any one of the three topics usefully discussed must present it on its own basis, as I do in this paper for that of blockade; or that, if there be any natural priority between them, the amendment which is proposed in the name of justice must take precedence of that which is proposed in the name of humanity, and still more of any which its advocates may rest mainly on British policy, real or supposed.

I propose to treat the subject under the following arrange

ment:

I. The history of blockade.

II. The rules of blockade between which we must choose. III. The rules of blockade considered on the ground of

justice.

IV. Commercial blockades considered on the ground of general international policy.

V. Commercial blockades considered on the ground of special British policy.

I-THE HISTORY OF BLOCKADE.

Little is found in ancient times on the rights and duties of neutrals. Belligerents must always have desired to convert neutrals into allies, and when the full attainment of that object seemed hopeless, they must always have desired that neutrals should at least so far take part against the enemy as to discontinue their commerce with him. Nor need we doubt that, when this lesser aid has been refused to sympathy, strong belligerents in all ages have pressed for it as due to justice: similar arguments reproduce themselves under similar circumstances. But there is no trace that the ancient lawyers or philosophers ever theorised on the cases in which it could reasonably be demanded of a neutral that he should discontinue his commerce with the enemy. Such discontinuance is sometimes almost necessarily caused by military operations. Few neutrals, for instance, would, as a mercantile speculation, run the risk of attempting to supply a place actively besieged, though a wish to relieve it might prompt to attempts of the kind, which the besiegers again would summarily repress to the utmost of their power. These cases, therefore, might well be left to take care of themselves; but where no military operations were otherwise on foot which would naturally impede neutral commerce, the right to undertake operations directed, like the capture of contraband or a commercial

blockade, expressly and solely against neutral commerce, could only exist under a positive rule; and the fact that in the extensive remains of classical literature no such rule appears, to govern claims which, from the permanence of human nature, can hardly have failed to be made, is sufficient of itself to indicate the judgment which the ancient thinkers passed on those claims. The discontinuance by a neutral of intercourse with either belligerent, where not an effect of the operations taking place between the belligerents, must have seemed to them so plain a form of alliance with, or subservience to, the other belligerent, that they did not dream of taking it out of the category of political acts, to rank it with those which were to be argued on grounds of law or ethics.

These views are strongly confirmed by the most remarkable ancient instance that bears on what we now call the duties of neutrality. Immediately after the close of the first Punic war, Carthage was assailed by a formidable insurrection of her African subjects, who for a great length of time besieged the city itself by land. She was aided by Hiero, whom Polybius praises for his policy in upholding Carthage as a rival to Rome: "not," says he, "but that the Romans too kept their treaty, and omitted no point of friendly conduct. At first, indeed, some discussion arose between them and the Carthaginians-for when traders sailed from Italy with supplies for the enemies of the Carthaginians in Africa, and the latter captured and took them into Carthage, till nearly five hundred. of them were there in prison at once, the Romans made a complaint on the subject. But afterwards, when this affair had been settled diplomatically, and the Romans had received back all the men as the result of the negotiation, they showed so good a feeling towards the Carthaginians as immediately to make them a present in return of the prisoners that remained from the war in Sicily." Under the treaty, the Romans were not bound to release these prisoners without ransom. from that time," proceeds Polybius, "they acceded readily

"And

and handsomely to all the demands made upon them, so as even to allow their traders to export continually to the Carthaginians what they wanted, while preventing such export to the enemies of Carthage."-Polyb. i., 83.

It may, perhaps, be suggested that the concession thus ultimately made by the Romans was in obedience to some acknowledged rule, and that the position they first took up had reference to the right of enforcing that rule, just as it has been proposed in modern times that neutral governments should undertake the duty of preventing traffic by their subjects in contraband, as a substitute for the interference of the belligerents with them. But it must be observed that the presumption of a rule is displaced by the fact that the Romans acceded to other demands of the Carthaginians as well; and that Polybius does not state of what nature were the supplies furnished to the African insurgents, nor whether the Carthaginians had established a blockade of the insurgents' coast, omissions which such a writer could not have made if rules of contraband and blockade had existed. The conclusion therefore is, that the Carthaginians, as a political act, tried to stop altogether the trade of neutrals with the enemy; and that the Romans, having vindicated their independence by maintaining altogether their trade with either belligerent, voluntarily, by another political act, prohibited to their citizens and subjects the trade with the Africans.

The question seems to have remained, during a large part of the middle ages, on much the same footing as in ancient times. It has indeed been said that a new element was introduced into it by the Mediterranean cities assuming to apply to their mutual quarrels the Roman laws against commerce with the enemies of Rome, and the decrees of the popes against commerce with infidels. But I find it difficult to believe that so palpable a confusion can have been made: that Venice, for example, at war with Genoa, should invoke against Barcelona laws made by emperors or popes for their subjects,

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