parts to separate from each other, and unite with neighbouring bodies for which they possess affinity. Is it meant to say that that nation, in other words, that that army, by the mere fact of the supremacy which it has grasped, gains rights against third parties who do not mix themselves in any way with its proceedings? But to return to general considerations, the moment it is realised that national life is but a form, governing the individual lives of the aggregate mass of citizens, it must be perceived that in order to claim for a nation, as against neutrals, the same rights of self-preservation which belong to individuals in a state of nature, as against unoffending persons, it is necessary to claim for individuals the right to inflict on unoffending persons, for the sake of preserving what they deem to be some more favourable condition of existence, all that they might inflict on them for the sake of preserving existence itself.

In conscience, no man can inflict a mischief on an unoffending person, in order to avoid a not greater mischief to himself. Thus, A. cannot, in conscience, kill B. in order to avoid being killed by C. But farther, the right as against the third party, or the third party's duty of submitting to the exercise of the right, does not depend merely on its conscientious assertion. If A. and C. fight, the fact that A. is in danger, and, even conscientiously, seeks to inflict a lesser mischief on B. in order to escape the danger, is not conclusive as to B.'s duty of submitting to the infliction. B. may, in all good conscience, claim to exercise his own judgment on the quarrel; and, if he finds A. to be in the wrong, he may close against him the desired means of escape, except on condition of his doing towards C. that which he, B., erroneously or not is immaterial so long as it be conscientiously, believes to be just. Without this right of the third party, which in very many cases is also a duty, civil society itself would be an injustice. B. is rated to the police in order that A. may not be robbed by C. B., in this, suffers a lesser mischief in order that A.

may avoid a greater; but B. has, in return, the right of seeing that A. does not call in the police to gratify his own malice against C.

If we apply these principles to international relations, the result is obvious. It is darkening knowledge by words without understanding, to talk of what a belligerent may do against a neutral by natural right, and yet refuse the neutral his right to judge of the merits of the cause, which is a right equally natural if he is to suffer for the cause. The nations of the earth are not yet prepared for an universal system of arbitration. Granted, and the consequence is, that they are not yet in a position in which belligerents can justly claim to inflict sufferings on neutrals. If a belligerent attempts to meddle with the commerce of a neighbour who strictly observes all the duties of neutrality, and at the same time haughtily prohibits that neighbour from expressing an opinion on the justice of the war, then, however conscientious the belligerent may be, the neutral has a clear right to refuse submission; and the sooner neutrals make it a rule to refuse submission in such cases, the more they will help forward the advent of arbitration as a substitute for war.

I conclude then that the attempted justification of commercial blockades by the doctrine of necessity will not bear criticism, and that their justice must turn on the question of neutral or unneutral conduct, in which balance we have already tried them and found them wanting.

IV.-COMMERCIAL BLOCKADES CONSIDERED ON THE GROUND OF GENERAL INTERNATIONAL POLICY.

There has been much discussion lately on the proposal of Mr. Marcy to exempt private belligerent property from capture on the seas, the cases of blockade and contraband excepted. In that discussion the argument has been used, that wars are made rarer and shorter by being made more terrible to

belligerents. Whether the fact be as alleged it will be well worth enquiring, on the proper occasion, by the light both of reason and history; in the meantime the assertion wears a certain appearance of plausibility. But an echo of that argument has been allowed to find its way into the discussion of the present question, for it has been said that wars are made shorter by being made more terrible to neutrals, who are thereby goaded into interfering and putting an end to them. I must confess that this assertion would have seemed to me devoid of plausibility, had it not been prominently put forward as the statesman's view, and the opposite view stigmatised as the narrow and commercial one.

The patient acquiescence of the European states for two years and a half, reckoning to the publication of this paper, in that blockade which, of all those recorded, has occasioned the widest and deepest suffering among their population, ought now at length to dispel the dream that blockades shorten wars by provoking to intervention. If intervention should come in the present instance after all, is it from England or France that it may be expected? In other words, will the blockade have been the motive, or the desire of obtaining a friendly neighbour for the remodelled state of Mexico? But, if intervention should in another case be more speedily and surely provoked by a blockade, yet, being the mere effect of the smart, it must necessarily be of a nature adverse to the blockading power, and the arrangement by which it may patch up the quarrel must fail to be based on that calm appreciation of the causes of discord from which alone a permanent settlement can be expected. No man more desires than I do that arbitration may be wisely and effectively employed to compose the differences between nations. But to regard that object as attainable, without raising the arbitrator above the passing interests created by the conflict, is one of those errors which are only made in defending established abuses.

Another argument which has been used against the proposed

change, and this too by a statesman, is, that it would tend to prolong wars by equalising the resources of the belligerents. The dreaded consequence of equalisation must be admitted to be in most cases true in fact; it is the stronger belligerent who is most likely to profit by the system of commercial blockades, and exclude the weaker from the legitimate benefit of neutral commerce. But is equalisation to be dreaded ? For several centuries we have been in the habit of going to war to preserve the balance of power. Lately we have been accustomed to hear that our fears were often vain, and that the balance of power did not need such elaborate and costly righting. Still it is rather surprising to hear a system recommended just because it tends to destroy the balance of power. The argument may be valuable as a proof of the extent to which old ideas are losing their hold even on the minds of statesmen. But surely it cannot be seriously meant to say that, to make the liberties of every country depend on its preparation to stand the shock of a first campaign, is henceforth the great object of international law? Let those who have avowed that they admire commercial blockades because they tend to make the scale which is momentarily lighter kick the beam, ask themselves whether, if a war was to break out between Italy and Austria, their only, or their first, wish would be that it should be short, unconditionally short, without reference to any other consideration? Would they even express that wish of a war, if any most unhappily should arise, between England and France, remembering what has been the usual fortune of the first years of such wars?

Except that extreme inequality of preparation which lays a country open to be struck decisively in one campaign, there is no circumstance, between powers tolerably matched in resources, which has any influence, either in inviting to war or in prolonging it, that is worth naming in comparison with the moral and political interests at stake in their differences. I attach therefore but small importance to the argument that

this or that rule concerning belligerent rights tends to promote peace. But to those who think fit to enter into such considerations, I would suggest that at least no arrangement can be devised which might more effectually deter any maritime state from war, than one by which, while its own commerce should remain in that event exposed to the mischiefs it had provoked, the commerce of neutrals should be exempted from them. Commercial blockades have been chiefly valuable to belligerents, by enabling them to restrain neutrals from using the mercantile opportunities created by their neighbours' madness. Under the arrangement alluded to, if a mercantile nation went to war, it would do so at the risk of its commerce.

V. COMMERCIAL BLOCKADES CONSIDERED ON THE GROUND OF SPECIAL BRITISH POLICY.

I shall take the liberty of introducing this part of my subject in the words of Mr. Cobden: I could not claim an equal authority for the result of any independent researches I might make into the statistics, but the truth of the case, as Mr. Cobden has presented it, must commend itself to the common sense of every one.

"One third of the inhabitants of these islands, a number "equal to the whole population of Great Britain at the com"mencement of this century, subsist on imported food. No "other country contains half as many people as the United "Kingdom dependent for subsistence on the produce of foreign "lands. The grain of all kinds imported into England in 1861 "exceeded in value the whole amount of our imports sixty "years ago: and the greater portion of this supply is brought "from the two great maritime states, Russia and America, to "whom, if to any countries, the belligerent right of blockade "must have for us a valuable application. If left to the free "operation of nature's laws, this world-wide dependence offers "not only the best safeguard against scarcity, but the surest