2. That after it there was a maritime war, of which Chap. VII. the Proclamation was the cause.

3. That, by the Queen's Proclamation, acts done in British ports were made lawful, which would otherwise have been unlawful and criminal; and that it thus enabled the Confederates to procure ships of war and send them to sea, which otherwise they could not have done, and to obtain goods and money in England.

4. That it enabled these ships to cruise, which otherwise they would have been unable to do.1

5. That, the existence of a state of war, even at sea, does not by itself justify a foreign Power in declaring itself neutral. That it must further be shown that such a declaration is "necessary," in order to ward off some positive inconvenience from the foreign Power or its subjects. That the foreign Power is not to be the sole judge whether it has reason to apprehend such an inconvenience, and that this may be contested by the Sovereign whose subjects are in arms against him. That

1 "It was my wish to maintain

"1. That the act of recognition by Her Majesty's Government of insurgents as belligerents on the high seas, before they had a single vessel afloat, was precipitate and unprecedented;

"2. That it had the effect of creating those parties belligerents after the recognition, instead of acknowledging an existing fact;

"3. That this creation has since been effected exclusively from the ports of Her Majesty's kingdom and its dependencies, with the aid and co-operation of her Majesty's subjects."-Mr. Adams to Earl Russell, 20th May, 1865.

"The assumed belligerency of the insurgents was a fiction—a war on paper only, not in the field-like a paper blockade, the anticipation of supposed belligerency to come, but which might never have come if not thus anticipated and encouraged by Her Majesty's Government. Indeed, as forcibly put by Mr. Adams, the Queen's Declaration had the effect of creating posterior belligerency instead of merely acknowledging an actual fact.

"In virtue of the Proclamation, maritime enterprises in the ports of Great Britain which would otherwise have been piratical, were rendered lawful; and thus Great Britain became, and to the end continued to be, the arsenal, the navy-yard, and the treasury, of the insurgent Confederacy."-Mr. Fish to Mr. Motley, 25th September, 1869.

Chap. VII. in the absence of " necessity" such a declaration is " premature;" and that being premature it is "wrongful" and "injurious," and warrants a demand for "redress. and indemnity."

6. That no such necessity existed at the time of the issue of the Queen's Proclamation, nor afterwards; or at any rate that none would have existed afterwards but for the issue of the Proclamation.1

This is, I think, a fair and true statement of the propositions which may be extracted from the despatches of the American Government.

The case of the British Government is contained in the counter-propositions which follow:

1. That a war carried on by a blockade of ports and coasts on the one side, and on the other by cruisers and privateers, is a maritime war; and that it is not the less a maritime war because there is a disparity of strengthbecause the blockade is successful, and the cruisers and privateers are few. That such a war had been virtually

1 "The issue between the United States and Great Britain, which is the subject of the present correspondence, is not upon the question whether a civil war has recently existed in the United States, nor is the issue upon that other question, whether such a civil war was actually existing there at the date of the Queen's Proclamation of neutrality. What is alleged on the part of the United States is, that the Queen's Proclamation, which by conceding belligerent rights to the insurgents lifted them up for the purpose of insurrection to an equality with the nation which they were attempting to overthrow, was premature because it was unnecessary, and was in its operation unfriendly because it was premature. . The United States remain of opinion that the Proclamation has not been justified on any ground of either necessity or moral rights; that, therefore, it was an act of wrongful intervention, a departure from the obligations of existing Treaties, and without sanction of the law of nations."-Mr. Seward to Lord Stanley, 14th January, 1867.

"This Government insisted in the beginning, and has continually insisted, that the assumption of that attitude, unnecessarily and prematurely, would be an injurious proceeding, for which Great Britain would immediately come under a full responsibility to justify it or to render redress and indemnity."-Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, 27th August, 1866. See also Mr. Fish to Mr. Motley, 25th September, 1869.

declared, and was in existence and in active operation, Chap. VII.

before the Proclamation was issued, and for several weeks at least before it could have been known in the Confederate States, and therefore could not possibly have been created by it.

2. That the Proclamation did not make lawful any acts within British territory which would otherwise have been unlawful; nor enable, nor in any way assist, the Confederates to procure ships of war in England or elsewhere, or to send them to sea; and that a recognized belligerent is no more able to do this in England than an unrecognized belligerent is.1

3. That the toleration extended to the Confederate cruisers consisted substantially in not excluding them from British ports, and in suffering them to remain there for a limited time, and to purchase in the market limited supplies of provisions and of coal. That Great Britain had a right to accord this permission to vessels which were not piratical nor engaged in any enterprise prohibited by the law of nations, That she would have had the same right had no declaration of neutrality been issued. That nothing could be more unreasonable than to expect her to treat as pirates persons who were not such, and who were not so treated by the American Government itself. And that the permission accorded to them was likewise accorded to Federal cruisers, and by them far more largely used.

4. That, given the existence of a state of war, any foreign Power has a right to declare itself neutral, whose territory the war may approach, or whose subjects may be brought into contact with it. That the question

1 Nor does such a Proclamation, as some writers seems to imagine, give to the revolted community any locus standi in the Courts of the neutral country, or any power which it would not otherwise have to enter into contracts there, to buy goods or borrow money, whether for the purposes of the war or for any other purpose. In the eye of the law it continues to be what it was before-a mass of population in arms against the Government of a friendly State.

Chap. VII. whether any inconvenience, or how much, is to be apprehended from not making such a declaration, is not a question which either belligerent has a right to discuss with the neutral, but one of which the neutral is the best and sole judge. That in no case and under no circumstances can a declaration of neutrality be a wrong to a Power which is itself exercising, or has assumed to exercise, against neutrals, any of the jura belli.

5. But lastly, that, at the time of declaring itself neutral, the British Government had in fact sufficient reason to apprehend inconvenience from remaining silent, and to assume formally and at once the position of a neutral, which must have been assumed sooner or later.

The reader of this narrative will be able to judge for himself between these two chains of propositions-which of them is the truer in fact and the sounder in principle. He will be able to judge whether the Confederates were, or were not, a mere body of armed insurgents, without organization, without a Government, without judicial tribunals, without seaports, without resources; and whether the contest was more correctly described by the American Secretary of State as "an armed sedition," such as is "frequent in all countries," or by the Supreme Court as "the greatest of civil wars." He will have observed in what light it was practically regarded by the Federal Administration, by the Federal Courts, by the people of the North, by the people of the South, and by Europe. And he will be able to decide whether, in the presence of such a contest, a maritime nation, with whom both North and South had incessant and profitable intercourse, had or had not the right, without incurring even an imputation of unfriendliness or of undue haste, to declare itself neutral.

It is evident, however, that the real complaint against Great Britain was not that she declared herself neutral, but that she was so. To contend that she ought to have

excluded Confederate ships from her ports, denied them Chap. VII. the hospitalities due by the general custom of nations to all vessels not tainted with piracy, and treated them as pirates, whilst Federal cruisers were permitted to enter and supply themselves freely-what is this but to maintain that she had not in this contest the right to be neutral? I affirm that to be neutral was her right and duty.1

The American Government has represented itself as a sufferer by this neutrality. Had this been really so, to be neutral would none the less have been the right and duty of Great Britain. But was it so? What the United States really lost by it has never been distinctly stated. But it is easy to see what they gained. They gained the liberty to exercise against British ships on the high seas the rights of visit and search, of capturing contraband, and of blockade- rights which spring solely from the relation of belligerent and neutral, and which the neutral acknowledges by recognizing the existence of that relation. The advantages reaped in maritime war from the exercise of such rights fall, where there is a disparity of force, into the hands of the stronger belligerent; where the disparity is great, he has a monopoly of them, for he is able to shut up his

1 In December 1864, Mr. Seward wrote to the Brazilian Chargé d'Affaires :

"This Government disallows your assumption that the insurgents of this country are a lawful naval belligerent; and on the contrary it maintains that the ascription of that character by the Government of Brazil to insurgent citizens of the United States, who have hitherto been, and who still are, destitute of naval forces, ports, and courts, is an act of intervention in derogation of the law of nations, and unfriendly and wrongful as it is manifestly injurious to the United States."

It is plain that the real grievance was not that the belligerents were recognized as belligerents too soon, but that they were so recognized at all. The stress laid on the date of the British Declaration is an endeavour to give the complaint something like plausibility, and to point against Great Britain in especial an accusation which really includes other neutral nations.