inaction. In short, to affect to wage war at sea without capturing property is to wage no war at all, and to make of the strongest fleet the least effectual arm -for the stronger it proved and was known to be the less possibility would be afforded to it of using its strength.

Of what avail can it be that the flag of any State is found in every sea all over the world with no other to challenge it, if from every sea all over the world the enemy of that State is nevertheless allowed freely to draw supplies with which to carry on the war? Of what avail is it to possess a navy that finds no adversaries? Of what avail to make war at sea at all unless by it an injury is inflicted upon the adversary? The question is answered as soon as stated.

No publicist or statesman who has ever seriously considered what war is, has ever been so foolish as to propose that property either public or private should be exempt at sea any more than on land from the effects of the war. It always has been, it still is universally admitted that in war the property of a belligerent is liable to capture at sea by the other belligerent, and those alone have questioned it who assume to condemn war altogether, and who thus stand altogether outside of the question, which is how war is to be carried on assuming that it exists.

CHAPTER V.

CAPTURE AT SEA THE MOST EFFECTUAL AND

MERCIFUL METHOD OF WAr.

THE exercise of the right of seizure and confiscation, whether by State vessels, or commissioned private vessels, while it is the most effectual, is also the mildest and least cruel of all methods of making

war.

That to capture property is a more effectual means of injuring the enemy than to destroy life, has already been shown as fully as it is necessary to show what is self-evident. It remains here to consider whether this method of warfare is, in its nature, worse or better, less or more humane than any of the other methods known, practised and admitted.

There are those who declare that to capture property is more barbarous and less honourable than to cut throats; they assert that it is more degrading to subjects of a warring State to be induced by the motives of personal profit to capture prize, than to be induced by the motive of personal advancement to shed blood. They do not propose or advise that the hope of extra pay and promotion shall be withdrawn from among the inducements to the officers and men of the army and navy; but they say that the inducement of prize-money is in some way more immoral and less honourable. And what is remarkable is that the same persons who hold this

language, entirely change their tone, when they come to speak of the merchant, in whose interest, short-sightedly viewed and ill understood, they raise their contention. It is not lawful, they assert, for any soldier or sailor or any volunteer to be moved by the hope of gain; even though it should be a gain in which his country participates; but it is lawful for the merchant to be moved by that hope, nay to be moved by that alone, even if its realization be fraught with disaster to his country. The soldier, the sailor and the volunteer must fight, they say, without any consideration of private gain; but the merchant must trade upon this consideration alone; nay more than that, he has a right to claim any sacrifice on the part of his country which will enable him to continue his trade at all times. It is, nevertheless, manifest that if it is right to reward one who fights for the State, out of taxes taken from his countrymen, it cannot be wrong to reward another out of prizes taken from his countrymen's enemies, and that it is not less honourable to receive prizemoney for destroying the enemy's resources in goods, than it is to receive a title or a riband for destroying his resources in men. Nay, since the first object is to weaken the foe, and thus to cause the war to be brought successfully to an end, and since, therefore, he is best entitled to reward by his country who most powerfully contributes to this end, the greatest rewards and the highest honours should be reserved, not for those who kill most men, and thereby inflict a comparatively slight injury on the enemy; but rather for those who capture property, and thereby at once inflict a great injury upon him, and also add to the resources of their own country.

It has, however, been freely alleged that this

method of making war is more barbarous and brutal than all others. Those others be it remembered consist in the destruction of human life, while this is solely concerned with property; which alone is a sufficient answer to such an argument. But from the declamatory denunciation of the capture of property at sea, it is apparent that the methods by which alone that capture can lawfully be effected, are either unknown or are intentionally concealed. For which reason it seems expedient here to set forth what the procedure is, whether for State vessels or Privateers.

The cruiser if he comes across a vessel he suspects to have enemy's goods on board, requests her to lay to, and sends a boat on board with an officer whose duty it is to examine the vessel's papers. If there appears from these reasonable and probable cause to believe that the vessel itself is the property of the enemy, or that there is contraband of war or enemy's property in the cargo, the captain of the cruiser on his responsibility and at his risk, puts a prize crew on board, and takes the vessel into port.' He may not break bulk, nor touch or embezzle an article on board the vessel under pain of forfeiting his whole share in the prize, together with treble the value of the articles embezzled. He may not injure a person on board, he may not even ransom the prize and set it at liberty, but must bring it into port for adjudication." Once there, the vessel is delivered over to the Prize Court, which proceeds to decide whether the capture is good prize or not;

1

1 This, of course, refers to the procedure that would be followed by any Power that does not adhere to the Declaration of Paris.

2 55 Geo. III. cap. 160, s. 56.

3 Idem, s. 12.

and if not, the captor is liable, and is condemned; to pay costs and adequate damages for his interference with the vessel. There is in short no warlike act which is so fenced about with conditions and with securities as this, none in which the voice of the dispassionate judge is heard as it is in this, none in which injury to the innocent is so guarded against, none in which the excesses of the strong and the violent are so precluded. In other operations of warfare, such as battles ashore or on the seas, the whole black array of human passions are let loose and encouraged to do their worst; in this they are restrained by the most rigid rules, and forced to submit themselves to the judgment and approval of a calm and orderly tribunal, before which if any man has wrought violence or inflicted injury he has to answer it.

The seizure of property on land in time of war is subject to no such rules. Any military commander who chooses to declare it necessary, may on land seize any property he may please to designate, without any form of trial or judgment whatever. has no Prize Court to face; no Law of Nations to obey, nothing but his own will. And though it is

1

He

See Lord Stowell's letter of 10th Sept., 1794, as to procedure, in Robinson's Admiralty Reports, American edition. "Agreeing to share prize-money (in 1799) involved sharing "the bad as well as the good fortune of the captors. Enemy's "property in neutral bottoms could not always be proved, and where proof failed the captors were liable to demurrage and "very heavy costs."--The Life of Sir W. Parker, Admiral of the Fleet. London, 1876, p. 127.

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2 "Did the Professor never hear of the sack and pillage of "towns, and the murder of innocent persons, in a storm? Did 'he never hear of the ravage of the Palatinate, where hundreds of harmless cottages were laid smoking in ruins by the most "accomplished and most humane prince of his time, reduced, by "the inferiority of his numbers, to waste a whole country, in