On the 1st May directions were given for the rein- Chap. VI. forcement of the squadron on the North American and West Indian stations, "so that the Admiral in command may be able duly to provide for the protection of British shipping in any emergency that may occur."1 On the 6th, after consultation with the Law Officers, the Government came to the conclusion that, upon the principles recognized both by Great Britain and by America, the revolted States must be regarded as a belligerent party in the war now known to have begun. will, however, as I have said, be set forth in the Proclamation."— Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (Third Series), vol. clxii, pp. 1378 and 1763. The reasons which make it important that a neutral Government should lose no time in issuing instructions to its officers, and information to its subjects, are stated by Mr. Dana :— "Where the insurgents and the parent State are maritime, and the foreign nation has extensive commercial relations and trade at the ports of both, and the foreign nation and either or both of the contending parties have considerable naval force, and the domestic contest must extend itself over the sea, then the relations of the foreign State to this contest are far different. In such a state of things, the liability to political complications, and the questions of right and duty to be decided at once, usually away from home, by private citizens or naval officers, seem to require an authoritative and general decision as to the status of the three parties involved. If the contest is a war, all foreign citizens and officers, whether executive or judicial, are to follow one line of conduct. If it is not a war, they are to follow a totally different line. "Now, all private citizens of a foreign State, and all its executive officers and judicial magistrates, look to the political departinent of their Government to prescribe the rule of their conduct, in all their possible relations with the parties to the contest. This rule is prescribed in the best and most intelligible manner for all possible contingencies by the simple declaration, that the contest is, or is not, to be treated as war. If the state of things requires the decision, it must be made by the political department of the Government. It is not fit that cases should be left to be decided as they may arise. by private citizens, or naval or judicial officers, at home or abroad, by sea or land. It is, therefore, the custom of nations for the political department of a foreign State to make the decision."-Dana's Wheaton, p. 135, Note. 1 Lord J. Russell to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, 1st May, 1861. Chap. VI. On the 13th, the Royal Sign-manual was affixed to a Proclamation of Neutrality, which was published in the London Gazette on the following day. Copies were sent on the 15th to Lord Lyons and to the British Consuls at American ports, "with instructions to exhibit the same in their respective Consular offices, and to take suitable steps for making known the purport of the same to Her Majesty's subjects residing or entering within their jurisdiction, taking care, however, to do so in the manner best calculated to avoid wounding the susceptibilities of the authorities or people of the places where they reside."1 The tenor of the Proclamation was as follows:-It began by taking notice that "hostilities had unhappily commenced between the Government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America," announced the Queen's determination "to maintain a strict and impartial neutrality in the contest between the said contending parties," and commanded her subjects to observe a like neutrality. It recited at length various prohibitions of British criminal law contained in the Foreign Enlistment Act (59 Geo. III, c. 69), enjoined obedience to these prohibitions, and concluded by a warning, addressed to all Her Majesty's subjects, that, should they infringe the law of nations by any violation of neutral duties, they would incur under that law penal consequences against which they would receive no protection from the Crown. The substantial part of it was the public declaration that, in the judgment of the Executive, a state of war existed, with all those incidents which are attached to a state of war by the law of nations. In other respects, it operated only as a warning. It imposed on the subjects of the Crown no legal liabilities from which they would otherwise have 1 Lord J. Russell to Lord Lyons, 15th May, 1861. been free, nor did it, as I think, relieve them from any Chap. VI. to which they would otherwise have been subject.1 This Proclamation was followed on the 1st June by Orders interdicting the armed ships and privateers of both belligerents from carrying prizes made by them into the ports, harbours, roadsteads, or waters of the United Kingdom, or of any of Her Majesty's Colonies or possessions abroad. The prohibition was, as must have been foreseen, disadvantageous solely to the Confederate States, whose cruisers, after the blockade had been made effective, were shut out from taking their prizes into any port of their own. They were deprived in consequence not only of the value of such ships and cargoes as they could capture, but of what was far more important-the stimulus which the hope of prize-money lends to maritime war, and which was ill-supplied by vague promises that the value of prizes taken and destroyed should be paid to the captors when the war was at an end. The Orders drew, therefore, earnest but ineffectual expostulations from the agents of the Confederate Government in London; and Mr. Seward, when it was communicated to him, remarked that "it would probably prove a death-blow to Southern privateering.”2 The Southern Confederacy seem, in fact, to have had few or no privateers after the first year of the war; and the officers and crews who served in its scanty marine had no inducements to animate them beyond zeal for their cause, love of adventure, and their pay.3 Regulations of this kind are not governed by any 1 For the Proclamation itself see the Note at the end of this Chapter. It was framed on the general model of that issued in 1859 on the commencement of the war between Austria and France and Sardinia; and the same model was afterwards employed in the wars between Spain and Chili, 1866, and between Austria and Prussia in the same year. 2 Lord Lyons to Lord J. Russell, 17th June, 1861. 3 For these Orders, and the Orders and Instructions issued subsequently during the war, see the Note at the end of this Chapter. -L Chap. VI. general law. They are entirely discretionary. A neutral Government may admit into its ports or exclude from them (unless in case of stress of weather) both the public ships and privateers of the belligerent powers, or may admit the former and exclude the latter. It may suffer prizes to be brought in and sold, or to be brought in but not sold, or not to be brought in at all. In laying down these rules, the neutral regards his own convenience, and is guided by his own judgment; and, so long as they are applied indifferently to both belligerents, neither has a right to complain of them on the ground that they are practically more disadvantageous to himself than to his enemy. The incidence of a rule can never indeed be exactly even unless the circumstances of the belligerents are exactly the same. The neutral is not to blame for this inequality, nor is he under any obligation to provide against it. These are settled maxims of international law. The reasons which had actuated the British Government operated also, though not so forcibly or so immediately, on other European Powers. The French Emperor, on the 10th June, issued a Declaration which, if compared with the British Proclamation, will be found to differ little from it in substance. The former is in one respect a little more indulgent than the latter, since it permits prizes to be brought into French ports, though it does not allow them to be sold there. Declarations or notifications were subsequently issued by the Governments of Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, Prussia, Portugal, Bremen, and Hamburg. The existence of a state of war, and of the rights with which it arms both belligerents alike, was thus formally recognized by the maritime Powers. NOTE. Proclamations, Orders, and Notifications issued by the Government of Great Britain and other Neutral Powers during the Civil War. I. PROCLAMATION, ORDERS, AND NOTIFICATIONS ISSUED BY THE 1. The Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality:"Victoria R. "Whereas we are happily at peace with all Sovereigns, Powers, and States. "And whereas hostilities have unhappily commenced between the Government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America. "And whereas we, being at peace with the Government of the United States, have declared our Royal determination to maintain a strict and impartial neutrality in the contest between the said contending parties. "We therefore have thought fit, by and with the advice of our Privy Council, to issue this our Royal Proclamation. "And we do hereby strictly charge and command all our loving subjects to observe a strict neutrality in and during the aforesaid hostilities, and to abstain from violating or contravening either the laws and statutes of the realm in this behalf, or the law of nations in relation thereto, as they will answer to the contrary at their peril. "And whereas in and by a certain Statute made and passed in the 59th year of His Majesty King George III, intituled An Act to prevent enlisting or engagement of His Majesty's subjects to serve in a foreign service, and the fitting out or equipping, in His Majesty's dominions, vessels for warlike purposes, without His Majesty's licence,' it is amongst other things declared and enacted as follows: "That if any natural-born subject of His Majesty, &c. (2nd Clause of the Foreign Enlistment Act'). "And it is in and by the said Act further enacted,— "That if any person within any part of the United Kingdom, &c. (7th Clause of the Foreign Enlistment Act'). “And it is in and by the said Act further enacted,— "That if any person in any part of the United Kingdom, &c. (8th Clause of the Foreign Enlistment Act'). "Now, in order that none of our subjects may unwarily render themselves liable to the penalties imposed by the said Statute, we do hereby strictly command, that no person or persons whatsoever do commit any act, matter, or thing whatsoever, contrary to the provisions of the said Statute, upon pain of the several penalties by the said Statute imposed, and of our high displeasure. "And we do hereby further warn all our loving subjects, and all persons whatsoever entitled to our protection, that if any of them shall presume, in contempt of this our Royal Proclamation, and of our high displeasure, to do any acts in derogation of their duty, as subjects of a neutral Sovereign in the said contest, or in violation or contravention of Chap. VI. Note. |