the continuance of the voyage, and will be condemned as lawful prize, provided adequate evidence can be found in her papers, or procured elsewhere, to satisfy an Admiralty Court of her illegal destination or point of departure. (And the adjudicating court, be it remembered, is in nearly every case the court of the captor.) That is, if Charleston be formally and validly placed and declared in a state of blockade by the Federal authorities, a French vessel laden with wine, clearing out for Charleston, or believed to be destined for that port, may be stopped in the Bay of Biscay and carried for adjudication to New York;-and if the American prize-court of that city shall be satisfied that she really did intend to try to run into Charleston harbour, she will be condemned. In like manner, if a vessel laden with cotton or tobacco had eluded the vigilance of the blockading squadron, and, sailing out of Charleston on a dark night, had succeeded in reaching the British Channel, and was within five miles of Falmouth, she might be lawfully boarded by an American cruiser, brought back, and condemned. It is obvious that this enormous extension of the range of a blockade must be modified, or the interruptions to innocent commerce would become intolerable, and nearly all the benefit derivable from the other relaxations of international law, of which we have spoken as adopted or likely to be adopted, would be lost. If a cruiser be empowered to arrest and search all ships three thousand miles distant from the blockaded port, to ascertain their destination, and if a foolish captain finds or fancies grounds for suspecting an illegal design, they are to be carried into distant prize-courts for adjudication, it is clear that all neutrals would join to put down such an intolerable practice. A right of search and capture so exercised would become a nuisance as great as war. But as no neutrals would now tolerate such an extension of blockading privileges, so, on the other hand, no belligerents would endure such a limitation of them as would enable a crowd of merchant ships to congregate in the immediate vicinity of the blockaded port, ready to run in during fogs or in rough weather, when the guarding squadron had been blown off shore, or was in chase of some decoy. Almost equally unpermissible in equity would be an arrangement which allowed vessels to collect in some near neutral harbour, and lie there in wait for any favourable opportunity of running the blockade. It is questionable whether the use of Nassau for this purpose by our merchants at the present moment be not, in principle, though of course not in law, a breach of neutrality. Certainly it is a meditated violation of the blockade. It will be necessary, probably, to confine the jurisdiction of the blockading squadron to the seas in which its functions lie,—so that merchantmen found there may

be held to betray prima facie a wrong design: i. e. that they are not likely to be on their way to any neutral port or innocent destination. The precise modification necessary and practicable, as well as just, however, will have to be considered and deliberately fixed by a convention of the maritime powers, such as, we trust, will be summoned after the close of the present unhappy struggle.

2. It will be desirable also to consider whether the right of blockade by belligerents must not be restricted in time as well as in space. We are satisfied that some modification of this sort has become indispensable, though the precise nature and degree of that modification it is not easy to specify. There must be a limit set to the amount of inconvenience which belligerents are justified in inflicting on unoffending and unconcerned neutrals; and if this limit be not fixed by law and treaty, neutrals will take the law into their own hands. No nation ought to be called upon, or will submit, to endure any severe and very longcontinued privations and sufferings arising out of a war between two countries equal in obstinacy and in strength. We may be content to bear a little, but not a great deal. We may be content to bear for two years or for five, but not for a generation. It is plain that if any article indispensable to mankind were produced only in a single country, mankind neither would nor ought to acquiesce in the indefinite, or even very prolonged, blockade of the ports of that country, even though the very circumstance made such blockade the most efficient weapon the hostile belligerent could use. Thus, quinine being not only an invaluable but a necessary medicine, and being ex hypothesi only obtainable in Peru, an indefinite or permanent blockade of Peru could not be permitted. Salus populi lex suprema. In like manner, tea is now become so nearly a necessary of life, that no blockade of the Chinese ports that deprived us of it for a series of years could be long respected. If cotton were procurable only from America, England and France would be obliged to say-and would be justified in saying-to the government at Washington, "We do not wish to interfere with your belligerent rights, but you must finish your dispute within a year or two, or the interests of our citizens will compel us to insist on your abandoning your blockade of the Gulf States." If, again, there were a bad harvest throughout Europe and a teeming one in the United States, it could not be permitted that France or England should seal up the ports of the latter country, and so inflict the miseries of an artificial famine on the people of the Old World. Nor, even in a weaker case, could all the manufacturing and commercial nations of Europe be expected to accept in patience such a disorganisation and re

striction of their habitual and staple industries as would follow a chronic or lifetime war in America. The very reason for which neutral nations endure all the unmerited sufferings incidental to belligerent operations-namely, that wars may be the sooner ended by allowing the greatest possible freedom of mutual infliction to the belligerents-is lost as soon as wars become continuous and interminable. Therefore, though we cannot venture to attempt any thing like specification, we may safely assert that there is a range, a time, and a degree beyond which the injury inflicted on neutrals by the right of blockade cannot henceforth be sanctioned by the law of nations.

3. It now only remains for us to discuss the narrow question, how the interests of Great Britain specially would be affected by the proposed abolition of the right of commercial blockades. And here we are bound to admit that Mr. Cobden's arguments have great force, and, as far as they go, are cogent and convincing, though, from not embracing the whole of the case, we cannot deem them conclusive. The less disposed and the less likely a nation is to be belligerent, the more will she gain by the abolition of blockades; and England is becoming more neutral year by year, both in disposition and in practice. The more paramount and unquestioned the naval supremacy of any nation, the more efficiently will she be able to use the weapon of blockades, and the less liable she will be to suffer from it; the greater interest, therefore, will she have in retaining the right. Now the naval superiority of England is year by year becoming less marked and less indisputable. At the close of last war, fifty years ago, she was not only unrivalled at sea, but she was absolute; her competitors were literally nowhere. Now France and America both run her close, and a combination of their marines with that of Russia would expose her to a hard struggle for existence. Again, the more extensive and multifarious the commerce of any nation, the more must she, when a neutral, suffer from the system of blockades; and the commerce of Great Britain is the widest, and richest, and most complex in the world. Finally, a nation which imports the necessaries of life is liable to suffer far more from blockades-as from every other interruption to trade-than one which only imports luxuries and superfluities; and half the importations of England consist of necessaries or quasi necessaries, of articles of food or raw materials for manufacture; while most other nations with which we should be likely to go to war import only luxuries, or at least commodities with which it would be comparatively easy to dispense. A blockade of the ports of America, for example, would deprive us of a vast proportion of the cotton and the grain on which our people subsist, and of the tobacco which furnishes 6,000,000l. to

our revenue. A blockade of Russia cuts off our main supply of wheat and hemp; whereas, as far as Russia is concerned, such a blockade would scarcely affect the subsistence, or clothing, or ordinary life, of her population at all. A blockade of France would still leave her her corn and wine and silk (native and Italian), and beet-root sugar, and home-grown tobacco, and Belgian and St. Etienne coal; and a blockade of the United States would inconvenience the Americans in the articles of coffee and sugar, but in nothing else of prime necessity or much importance. Food they have, and clothing they make, and iron, oil, and most other things they find in abundance within their own limits. On the whole, none of the great countries of the world could be blockaded without Great Britain suffering more than any other people by the operation. So clearly is this the case that, as Mr. Cobden very pointedly shows, we do not, and we probably never should, enforce very strictly a blockade of the ports of any great state with which we were at war. We should not seal up the United States, because that would keep away our grain supply. We should not seal up the Confederate ports, because that would keep away our cotton and our tobacco. In the last war we still received wheat from Odessa, and (we believe) hemp and flax from Riga. If we were to blockade France, we should feel the want of her wine and gloves and silks, and should probably obtain them through Belgium, Italy, and Spain. In fine, we could scarcely blockade strictly and effectually the ports of any enemy without suffering more damage than we should inflict.

There is much truth in all this-indeed, it is all true cum grano; but it is not the whole truth. The part of the truth which is blinked by Mr. Cobden and made light of by Mr. Westlake, is this: the political position of England depends upon her maritime power. Her navy, and not her army, is the instrument on which she relies both for defence at home and for influence abroad. If, in addition to exempting the private property and merchant ships of her enemies at sea from capture, she were also to consent to the abolition of commercial blockades, in what way could she operate upon the trade or paralyse the strength of any antagonist with whom she chanced to be at war? If the other belligerent had no navy, or chose to secure that navy from harm by. laying it up in ordinary, her navy, having no ships of war to meet, and no merchant ships to capture, would be reduced to absolute inaction. Her wars would all have to be carried on to land. The only mode which would remain to her of encountering the hostility of any powerful state which chose to injure her, or the obstinacy of any feeble state which chose to insult her and set her at naught, would be by landing an army on her shores-a result which Mr. Westlake

accepts, but for which Mr. Cobden assuredly is not prepared. England, with a small army and a large fleet, would be reduced to fighting with only her left hand. France, Austria, Russia, or Prussia, might set us at defiance, might rob our travellers, imprison our citizens, pillage and oppress our allies, commit any injustice and any tyranny they pleased upon the continent of Europe, crush the hopes of Italy, destroy the liberties of Portugal or Greece; and unless we were prepared to send an army to fight at a distance from home and against overwhelming odds, we should be utterly powerless to interfere with oppressors or to assist friends. In fact, the effect would be nearly equivalent to the disarmament of England in the face of Europe. She might protect herself, indeed, but she would have to resign all hope of influencing or restraining others, and would virtually cease to be a European power. But the consequence would be almost worse across the Atlantic. If we became involved in war with the United States; if an insolent and unknowing government attacked our colony, imprisoned our ambassador, murdered or oppressed our citizens, we should be obliged to allow their ports to remain open and their trade to go on as usual; and could do nothing either to resist or punish them, except transporting at enormous cost as many regiments as we could spare to Canada, to fight our enemy amid pathless woods and along an almost illimitable frontier. We should enable the Americans, in a word, to choose, not only their field of battle, but their weapons. It seems very strange that men, not only of sense but of legal acumen and political experience, should be found to advocate a proposition the adoption of which would be so suicidal that its suggestion looks almost like treason, and which would involve regiments so multiplied and armaments so costly, that, coming from economists, it reads very like perversity or madness. We say, no; of all maritime belligerent rights, retain that of blockade, and that alone. This, properly limited and properly enforced, will allow you to stop the commerce of your foe and the commerce of neutrals with your foe, where you can do it most effectually, where you can do it with least injury to others, and where alone, therefore, in these days you have the right, or will long be allowed power, to stop it,-namely, at the harbours and along the coasts of the belligerent you are endeavouring to bring to terms.