if the great principles of the Law of Nations were laid down and established by such great Continental thinkers as Grotius and Vattel, it was mainly the English jurists, Prize Courts, and text-writers who reduced those principles to systematized practice as regards maritime warfare, for which Sir William Scott (Lord Stowell's) decisions alone provide a principled and reasoned rule of conduct in almost every conceivable case. But when the great struggle with Napoleon was over, the British people seem to have flung away all thoughts of war, and to have gradually been brought to the comfortable persuasion that there had at last opened for the world an era of universal peace, universal commerce, and universal great exhibitions. The frame of mind no longer existed which produced such masterpieces as the Duke of Newcastle's letter (inspired by Lord Mansfield, Sir George Lee, Dr. Paul, and Sir Dudley Ryder) in reply to the Prussian Memorial of 1752; Lord Liverpool's Discourse of 1759; and Ward's Treatise of 1801. British lawyers ceased to concern themselves with that Law of Nations which is to this day part of the Common Law of Great Britain, or limited their efforts to mere compilation and accounts of conventions; and if they have produced some respectable publications on this momentous subject, they have given to the world no great, nor even any remarkable work. Not one of them has even been found to this day to attempt to meet that crying need of the British Navy, which experience daily emphasizes a Manual of the Law of Nations for the especial use of British seamen. Such a manual has, indeed, been compiled for French seamen in Ortolan's excellent work, Règles et Diplomatie de la Mer, originally published in 1844, and whereof there issued a

second edition in 1864; but no such service as this has ever been rendered by the British lawyer to the British seaman, who needs it far more than his French compeer, nor has Ortolan even been translated; and the British naval captain, often alone and far away from all counsel, is left, when confronted by a difficult case, to steer his way through the intricacies of the law without any other aid than he can derive from a few ill-chosen works on the Law of Nations in general, which he cannot find his way about, and which, if he could, often fail to meet the seaman's case in a way which a seaman can comprehend.

If, on the one hand, the study of the Law of Nations has in recent years suffered from the neglect of the capable, it has, on the other hand, suffered still more from the meddling of the incompetent and unauthorized, who from time to time get together, call themselves a Conference or an Institute, and promulgate "views" which are solemnly reproduced by the newspapers as though they meant something or had effected something. Thus, deserted by the competent, bemused and bemuddled by the incompetent, and left at last without light or guidance, the student of the Law of Nations has too often been reduced to despair, and has even been occasionally tempted to declare, as the sapient Swiss banker and 66 Alabama" arbitrator declared at the Geneva tribunal, "there is no such thing as international law."

This, indeed, would seem now to be the prevailing view among people in general, whether on the Continent or in these Islands; but in these Islands most especially. The current impression is that Law between Nations lasts till war breaks out, and that it then stops; that most especially in maritime

warfare it is replaced by complete anarchy; that there is thenceforth no rule but that of Donnybrook -"wherever you see a head, hit it"—and that, as the lieutenant in charge of a British cruiser engaged on the coast of Crete is reported to have said, it was his business, and is that of every man of war during the existence of hostilities, to fire into "anything "that comes along."

In fact, as the most superficial student of the Law of Nations knows, it is the very contrary that is the case. The major part of the Law of Nations is concerned with the laws of war; and instead of that law ending with peace, it rather begins with war, almost every conceivable incident whereof has been provided for by settled, agreed, recognized rules well established, universally admitted, and having for their guardians and expounders the Prize Courts, that construe, administer, and enforce them. For no

relationship between nations has the Law of Nations laid down rules so precise, so clear, so sanctioned by practice as for the relationship of war. It may be added that for no relationship are such rules so necessary; and that were a war at sea ever to be begun in the belief that it need be subjected to no rules at all, the common necessities of both belligerents would immediately drive them both back to the law. Rules there must be, concerning Blockade, concerning Contraband, concerning Visit, Search and Capture, Prize good and bad, Parole, and Cartel, and even concerning the use of false colours and the affirming gun; nor has any war at sea ever yet been carried on without them. Prize Courts too there must still be, to construe and enforce the rules. And a Law of Nations there must still be, a body of law to which Prize Courts

may appeal, and without which they would find themselves destitute of any guiding principles in the exercise of their most delicate and important functions.1

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The contrary notion, that there is no Law of

1 The high estimate of the Law of Nations, and of its importance as part of the Common Law of England, held by English Courts, may be gathered from the following extract from p. 259 of Chisholme Anstey's Guide to the History, the Laws, and Constitutions of England (London, 1845). "Suppose, for in"stance, an Act of Parliament to be made against the Law of "Nations. That Act is null and void. It is not given to the "Legislature of any State to make Laws to affect, though it be "to ameliorate, the Condition of its Neighbours. The Courts, it "is true, will make every Construction of an Act of Parliament, "rather than hold it derogatory to the Law of Nations. If they can, they will say, with Lord Mansfield, the Act did not intend "to alter the Law of Nations. But, if such a Construction be 'inevitable, then they will hold the Act itself null and void; as "not warranted by the Law of Nations; that Universal Law "which will be carried as far in England as anywhere; which, as "it is rather the duty of the Courts to extend than to narrow, so "it is here adopted in its full Extent, by the Common Law, and "is held to be a Part of the Law of England itself; which "Acts of Parliament cannot alter; which is to be collected, together with the Rules of Decision concerning it, not from Acts "of Parliaments, but from the Practice of different Nations, and "the Authority of Writers;-and fixed and evidenced, by general "and antient, and admitted Practice, by Treaties, and by the general Laws and Ordinances, and the formal Transactions of "Civilized States;-of which Acts of Parliaments have, from "time to time, been made to enforce, or Decisions to facilitate, "the Execution, and are, therefore, to be considered, not as "introductive of any new Rule, but merely as declaratory of the "old fundamental Constitutions of the Kingdom;-and, finally, "without which, the Kingdom itself must cease to be a Part of "the civilized World."-Heatherfield v. Chilton, 4 Burr. 2016; Barbuit's Case, Ca. Tem. Talbot, by Forrester, 282; Triquet v. Bath, 3 Burr. 1840-1; Viveash v. Becker, 3 M. and S. 298; the Le Louis, 2 Dods. Ad. R. 249; IV. Bl. Comm. p. 60.

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Nations, and that there need be no rules of warfare, has led already to some strange conclusions; as, for instance, that there may be reasonably adopted and lawfully employed such a device as a "Pacific Blockade,"-.e., a blockade, not arising out of a state of war, which state alone gives any ground for such interference with the rights of the place or coast in question, and of traders therewith, as is involved in the forcible prevention by a foreign Power of peaceable access to it. A "Pacific Blockade" is as much a contradiction in terms as a "Pacific War," nor could the very notion of such a contradiction be entertained except by those who have lost all idea of the difference between peace and war.

And, strangely enough, the notion that it is right and lawful to attack or to prohibit the trade of a Power with which the attacking or prohibiting State is at peace, is accompanied by the equally novel and strange notion that it is not right or lawful to attack or to prohibit the trade of a Power with which the attacking or prohibiting State is at war. The mere suggestion of the proposition that it is wrong to attack an enemy's trade in war would have been scouted by any of the generation of Englishmen who still remembered how England had, by this very means, and no other, conquered Napoleon. The other proposition, that it is right to attack a friend's trade in peace, is one so monstrous and untenable that it can only be advanced by those who believe that peace is war and war is peace.

Another current notion is that " Contraband of "War" is anything that the Government of a belligerent State chooses to declare to be such, and nothing else though those who hold this notion appear usually to believe that, in case England were at war,