seems to have been forgotten and overlooked, is the fact that Privateers are as valuable for defence as they are for attack. The rule that enemy's property in enemy's ships is liable to capture by State cruisers has never yet been invalidated; and all English commerce is therefore to this extent liable to capture by the enemy whenever we are at war. But, now, any English vessel thus captured must be sent into port for adjudication in charge of a prize crew. Under these circumstances she becomes at once liable to recapture from the enemy; and this in fact is the very case in which maritime supremacy most makes itself felt. A country that is strong on the seas must of necessity have on the seas a large commerce, for it is thence only that maritime strength can be derived. Of necessity therefore it must have much property exposed to capture by the enemy. But its security is that if it has a preponderance at sea, if it has a great number of State cruisers, and if it does increase their number by adding to them all the Privateers that offer, it becomes all but impossible for the enemy to reach his ports with any captures he may make. He may seize but he can rarely enjoy, for before the prize can reach his port it is all but certain to be recaptured. This is no fancy picture; it is precisely what has occurred in all the great maritime wars in which we engaged before the Declaration of Paris.1

The question is not one of the liability of British commerce under the British flag to capture in case of war-for it is still liable to that-but it is this:

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"No Privateers were then (1801) allowed to be fitted out "from France; consequently no recaptures, which were formerly "almost a certain thing."-Life of Sir W. Parker. London, 1876, p. 166.

Whether in case of war, by the employment on both sides of Privateers, Great Britain would inflict or would suffer the greater injury. The fact that this country possesses a far larger number of merchant vessels and merchant seamen than any other Power, is in itself a sufficient solution of the question, since it shows that she could send out more Privateers than any other, or indeed than all the others put together. She has therefore the most to gain of any Power by using this arm, since she could use it with the greatest effect against her enemy. The first immediate object of maritime warfare is to drive the enemy's flag from the seas (as was done in 1799 and in 1805), and to cover them with our own. The more completely this is effected, the less will our commerce suffer, for the less chance will the enemy have of making a capture, or of getting it to port without being recaptured; and this can only be effected with absolute completeness by the use of Privateers, who will range all seas in search of prize and salvage money.

The case of the "Alabama" has often been cited to show the damage a single vessel may inflict on a largely extended commerce, and to prove that privateering would be as injurious to a nation with a large trade, as was the "Alabama" to the United States. But the case of the "Alabama" was not the case of a privateer, and has no analogy with it. The action of the "Alabama" was piratical; for her captain, as he has himself acknowledged, destroyed property and vessels without any regular examination or condemnation of them-without any judgment of any Prize Court, and upon his own sole fiat. And the responsibility of those acts having been brought home to Great Britain, Great Britain was made to

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restore the value of what was so destroyed. Moreover the course pursued by the captain of the "Alabama," which was that, not of capturing, but of destroying property, is a course which no Privateer would pursue. The immediate object of the Privateer is exactly the reverse of this-it is not to destroy but to preserve property, and to have it confiscated to his profit, which he can only do by taking it into port. A State vessel indeed may in the interest of the Government seek to destroy; but not the Privateer. In the very nature of the case it is necessary for him to carry his capture into a safe port, a matter of ease and almost of course if his own country commands the seas, but a matter of the greatest difficulty and almost of impossibility if the enemy commands them. It is therefore supremely ridiculous that the doings of the "Alabama" should be held up as showing the injuries a Privateer would do to an extended commerce, since that kind of injury is precisely that which no Privateer would seek to inflict.

There are those who affect to believe that it would be allowable for a belligerent to fit out Privateers in neutral ports, and imaginary pictures have been drawn of British commerce falling a prey to the depredations of Privateers armed in the United States in case of a war with any European Power.' It must however be assumed by those who use this as an argument that a neutral has the right to allow, and

1 "It was well known that at the commencement of the "Crimean war, the Russian Government was going to commis"sion privateers from the United States, and it was only the "Declaration (of Paris) in question which saved the world from "a horde of pirates issuing from the United States under the Russian flag."-Mr. Evelyn Ashley in the House of Commons, 13th April, 1875.

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would allow, armed expeditions to issue from its ports against a belligerent, a notion which was as solemnly denounced by every member of the Geneva Tribunal, as it has always been by every publicist."

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1 "As the subjects are not under an obligation of scrupulously "weighing the justice of the war, which indeed they have not "always an opportunity of being thoroughly acquainted with, and respecting which they are bound in case of doubt to rely on the Sovereign's judgment-they unquestionably may, with a safe conscience, serve their country by fitting out Privateers, unless the war be evidently unjust. But on the other hand it is an in"famous proceeding on the part of foreigners to take out com"missions from a prince in order to commit piratical depredations 'on a nation which is perfectly innocent with respect to this."Vattel (Chitty's translation), Book iii. cap. xv. § 229.

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Les souverains neutres sont dans l'obligation non seulement de défendre à leurs sujets d'accepter cette mission de guerre, "mais encore de prendre toutes les mesures en leur pouvoir pour 's'opposer à cette violation des devoirs de la neutralité. C'est "pour remplir cette devoir que les lois intérieures de la plupart "des Etats défendent expressément aux sujets d'accepter des "lettres de marque étrangères."-Hautefeuille, Droits et Devoirs des Nations Neutres, vol. i. page 154. See also Martens, vol. iv. p. 209.

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A Power which sends assistance in troops or money to one of the belligerent Powers, or even in strictness which permits its "subjects to take out letters of marque from the enemy in order "to fit out a Privateer, can no longer demand to be treated as a "neutral power."-Masters, On Captures, p. 217.

"A neutral Government is bound to use due diligence to prevent "the fitting out, arming, or equipping within its jurisdiction of "any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended "to cruise or to carry on war against a Power with which it is at "peace; and also to use like diligence to prevent the departure "from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on "war as above, such vessel having been specially adapted in whole "or in part, within such jurisdiction, to warlike use."-Rules for the Award of the Geneva Tribunal on the "Alabama" Claims, Treaty of 8 May, 1871.

The United States by this treaty "agree to observe the rules "as between Great Britain and itself in future."

And it is remarkable that the United States, the very power singled out as being ready to permit this infraction of the duties of neutrality, is the very power which has made (in the "Alabama" case) the latest and the most effectual protest against it, and has claimed and received damages for a cognate infraction of neutral duties.

The assumed abolition of Privateering is therefore of no advantage to Great Britain, but quite the reverse; for she, of all nations, could best use this arm against her enemy, and could also best protect herself from its use against herself.

But even if it were true, which it is not, that the abolition, so called, of Privateering were an equivalent advantage to Great Britain, for the disadvantage in the admission of the doctrine that the neutral flag covers enemy's merchandise, there is, as we shall see later,' no security in the nature of the compact that the advantage would be reaped, although there is every probability that the disadvantage would be inflicted. In short, by the Declaration, so long as it lasts, the right to capture enemy's goods (except contraband) is extinguished, Privateering is not abolished, but still subsists.

Privateers, however, in any case are and must be useless unless there be property on the seas liable to capture. The first article therefore of the Declaration derives all its importance from the second, which is,

II. "The neutral flag covers the enemy's merchandise, with the exception of contraband of war."

This is the kernel of the whole matter, the one truly important point to which all the rest is subsidiary, and to affirm which the Declaration was made. Let us examine its effects.

1 See page 157.