attendant vessels, may be capable of establishing so strictly, that at each part of the line ingress and egress may be prevented. This is perhaps a large admission; but we know not where else to draw the distinction and at all events, we should never forget, that it is an admission full of danger, and leading to utter subversion of principle, in the utter disregard of neutral rights, unless it be carefully limited by its appropriate checks.

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Now, what are those checks?-If there be no limit to this right but the good pleasure of the belligerents-if each party may bid against the other in mutual animosity, for the overthrow of the rights of third parties-and if those neutral rights may be encroached upon by both belligerents, according to their several desires of hurting each other, and their respective disregard of all other parties, or rather their respective dislike towards all who are not mixed in the contest, then it is in vain to talk of neutral rights, or of neutrality at all. For each belligerent will begin by going to the utmost extremity-each will decree that the other shall be cut off from all communication with the rest of mankind-and the party which is weakest, and whose threat cannot be executed, will be despised by neutrals, while they will be drawn into the quarrel against the stronger power. Such a right then can only increase the calamities of war, in the first instance; and speedily it must enlarge their range, by involving all other nations in the dispute between the belligerents, and putting an end to the very character and condition of neutrality all the world over. Some limit then must evidently be fixed; and the one which the nature of things presents to us, seems, on every account, the reasonable and safe one to choose. The power of each party to execute his intentions, appears to be this natural limit. Each belligerent should be strictly confined to such a blockade only as he has actual means of enforcing. While this is clearly understood, it seems scarcely possible that the general principle can be liable to great abuse; for, whatever may be the wishes of the parties, they cannot go beyond certain bounds; and, as far as they can go, they exercise a real hostility, to which, as their adversaries must expect they shall be exposed, so, neutrals must submit to its indirect consequences, in the hope that it may ultimately shorten the period of war.

That this limitation has, in general, and in the best times, been held by jurists, and admitted, by the practice of nations, to constitute an essential part of the right of blockade, we need not take great pains to show from history or from authority. We say, in general; for we are aware of attempts to disregard it ha ving now and then been made in times of peculiar confusion and national animosity, when the voice of reason was little likely to be heard. The Dutch in Philip II.'s time, and the French du

ring the revolution war, both acted, or attempted to act, in contravention of this principle. Thus, the decree of the 18th fanuary, 1797, declares, that all vessels found on the high seas, with any English goods whatever on board, to whomsoever belonging, shall be good prize; and it requires certificates of ori gin, under the hands of French Consuls, exactly as the more recent decress of Berlin and Milan do. (See Robinson's Admi» ralty Reports, vol. I. p. 342.) England at different times has declared large lines of coast, and whole colonies, to be in a state of blockade; but she has (till the present war) uniformly provided a naval force sufficient to make this blockade real and effectual; and as often as a question arose respecting the rights of neutrals to enter or sail from ports within such blockades, the inquiry essential to the decision has always been, whether such a force was stationed on the coast as was sufficient to blockade it effectually. According as this question was answered in the affirmative or negative, the decree of blockade was held to be good and lawful, or a mere nullity. As nothing can be more instructive than the decisions of our prize courts on this point, so, nothing can give us more gratifying views of the purity with which those tribunals administer the law of nations, and their impartiality in trying the delicate questions which come before them, between their own sovereign or their own countrymen, and the rulers or the people of foreign states. It is with pleasure, therefore, that we pause here, to consider how clearly the principles for which we are contending have been recognized, and indeed how anxiously and rigorously they have heen enforced by the High Court of Admiralty under the presidency of Sir William Scott, and the Court of Prize Appeal, composed, practically speaking, of that learned and honourable judge, the late and the present Masters of the Rolls, and Sir William Wynne. In observing the train of decisions, it will be essential to keep the eye upon dates as well as points; the time is material in this question:

In the case of the Frederick Molke, Boysen, December 10th, 1798, Sir William Scott lays it down, that nothing further is necessary to constitute blockade, than that there should be a force stationed to prevent communication, and a due notice or prohibition given to the party.' (1. Rob. 86.) In the Mercurius, Gerdes, December 7th, 1798, referring to the doctrines maintained by the armed neutrality of 1780, he describes a place to be in a state of blockade, when it is dangerous to attempt to enter it. (ibid. p. 84.) In the same case he says, still more precisely, that a blockade may exist without a public declaration, although, a declaration, unsupported by fact, will not be sufficient to esta blish it. And in support of this doctrine, he refers to the case VOL. VIII

of the West Indian blockade of 1794, as decided by the Lords of Appeal. That case merits our attention; and, though there is no report of it in the books, yet it is sufficiently known, from the frequent references made to it in other cases, and from one or two reported cases expressly ruled on the principle of it. Such was the case of the Betsey, Murphy, December 18th, 1798, in which the principle in question was the chief point. It was the case of an American taken by the English at the capture of Guadaloupe, April 1794, and retaken by the French, at the recapture of the island in the following June. The question arose on the legality of the first seizure, which had been made on the ground that the vessel had broken the blockade of Guadaloupe. The captors stated by affidavit,' that on the arrival of the British forces in the West Indies, a proclamation issued, inviting the inhabitants of Martinique, St. Lucie, and Guadaloupe, to put themselves under the protection of the English; that, on a refusal, hostile operations were commenced against them all; and that, in January, 1794, Guadaloupe was summoned, and was then put into a state of complete investment and blockade.' Upon this statement the learned Judge observes,' The word complete is a word of great energy; and we expect from it to find that a number of vessels were stationed round the entrance of the port, to cut off all communication. But, from the protest, I perceive that the captors entertained but a very loose notion of the true nature of a blockade; for it is there stated, that on the 1st of January, after a general proclamation to the French islands, they were put into a state of complete blockade.'—' It is a term, therefore, which was applied to all those islands at the same time under the first proclamation. The Lords of Appeal,' (he continues) have pronounced, that such a proclamation was not, in itself, sufficient to constitute a legal blockade. It is clear, indeed, that it could not, in reason, be held to produce the effect which the captors erroneously ascribed to it. From the misapplication of these phrases in one instance, I learn that we must not give too much weight to the use of them on this occasion; and, from the generality of these expressions, I think we must infer, that there was not that actual blockade which the law is now distinctly understood to require.' An argument in favour of the blockade having been raised upon a declaration of the municipality, that the island was in a state of siege,' Sir William Scott, with an indignant sneer at the revolutionary politicians of France, whom a dispenser of the public law may, above all other judges, be excused for holding in abhorrence, as the great contemners of the rights of neutrals, and the rash innovators on the ancient code of Europe, observes, that this is a term of the new jargon of France, which is sometimes applied to domestic disturbances, and cer

tainly is not so intelligible as to justify me in concluding, that the island was in that state of investment from a foreign enemy which we require to constitute blockade.' How rapid the progress of the jargon has been-how it has worked its way into the recesses of the Civil law, as well as of the Cabinet-how a single hint conveyed in that outlandish tongue has since become sufficient to convey ideas which whole sentences were formerly incapable of rendering intelligible-and how those who, in the infancy of their studies under French Doctors of the Law, had not organs of comprehending forms of blockade, which now-a-days they deal with as familiarly as if they had never been out of the University of Paris, we shall probably have occasion to see more nearly before we close the present discussion. In the mean while, it may suffice to observe, as touching the Betsey, that the learned Judge having, for the reasons already mentioned, ‘denied that a blockade existed till the operations of the forces were actually directed against Guadaloupe,' (notwithstanding the proclamation of blockade months before), pronounced it, on this ground, to be a case of restitution. (1. Rob. 94. et seqq.)

To seek for confirmations of the same sound and correct principles, would be only to take at random the dicta of the same distinguished Judge during any part of the last, and the earlier stages of the present war, in every question that hinged upon the right of blockade, or incidentally connected itself with it. We have the principle in the logical form of a general definition, in the case of the Vrouw Judith, Valkerts, January 17, 1799. A blockade is a sort of circumvallation round a place, by which all foreign connexion and correspondence is, as far as human force can effect it, to be entirely cut off (1. Rob. 151.) It meets us again in the exhaustive shape-in a specification of the classes which compose the genus blockade; and from which blockade by mere declaration is carefully excluded. There are two sorts of blockade :-one by the simple fact only; the other by a notification accompanied with the fact. In the former case, when the fact ceases, otherwise than by accident or the shifting of the wind, there is immediately an end of the blockade.' He then says, that where a blockade has been notified, a counter-notice should be given at the same time that the fact ceases. It is, he adds, the duty undoubtedly of a belligerent country, which has made the notification, to notify in the same way, and immediately, the discontinuance of it. To suffer the fact to cease, and to apply the notification again at a distant time, would be a fraud on neutral nations, and a conduct which we are not to suppose that any country would pursue. I do not say that a blockade of this sort may not, in any possible case, expire de facto; but, I gay, such a conduct is not hastily to be presumed against any

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nation.' (Neptunus, Knyp, 1. Rob. 171.) Nor does there appear, in any of the cases argued before the court, as far as the very admirable reports of Sir C. Robinson, the present King's Advocate, have preserved the history of them, any attempt, in these days, even by the ingenuity of counsel, when labouring under a heavy case, to contend for any blockade other than such as actual force is employed to begin and support.

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Such, then, we take to be the law of nations, as expounded by the highest authority on this important point. But, suppose that one of the belligerents neglecting, or openly violating this law, shall disregard the limits fixed by its own strength, and issue decrees, pretending to order what, in fact, it has no power to execute-proclaiming the coasts of its adversary to be blockaded, without providing a force sufficient even to attempt their circumvallation;-that the neutral may regard such conduct as wholly illegal, we have already seen; but what rights does it bestow, and what duties does it impose, on the other belligerent? Does this proceeding, in short, entitle the enemy to retaliate ?-We shall again seek for a solution in the records of the first Prize tribunal in the world, and in the words of its ablest sage. the noted case of the Flad Oyen, Martenson, a case, not of the less authority on the present occasion, that it overrules a material pretension introduced by the enemy during the last war, and favoured pretty anxiously by neutrals, Sir W. Scott combats the argument, that the practice followed, in some instances, by Great Britain, of condemning prizes in neutral ports, could ever justify France in a similar proceeding. That consequence, he says, I deny The true mode of correcting the irregular practice of a nation is by protesting against it, and by inducing that country to reform it. It is monstrous to suppose, that because one country has been guilty of an irregularity, every other country is let loose from the law of nations, and is at liberty to assume as much as it thinks fit. (1. Rob. 142.) This sentence would of itself be sufficient to establish, on an imperishable basis, the fame of the eminent judge who uttered it, and avowed himself ready to act upon its principles. Those principles are truly incontrovertible; and we rejoice to reflect how constantly they have been illustrated in the practice of the more enlightened states of Europe, but especially of England. What but a conviction of their soundness prevented the fatal play of partition from making the round of the continent in 1774? What other consideration dissuaded the English cabinet during the greater part of the last war from imitating, under the mask of retaliation, the unjust and violent decrees of the French government against this country, and their manifest violation of neutral rights? Why else did the commanders of our army in 1794 meet the abominable edicts of