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erty to retire with it. If she afterward takes on board a cargo, it is a fraudulent act, and a violation of the blockade. It is lawful for a ship to with. draw from a blockaded port in ballast, or with a cargo shipped bona fide before notice of the blockade.' (See also Vrouw Judith, 1 Robinson, 150; The Juno, 2 Robinson, 119; The Nostra Senhora, 5 Robinson, 52.) In Weldman's International Law,' volume 2d, p. 205, we find this passage: 'Where the blockade is known at the port of shipment, the master becomes an agent for the cargo; in such case, the owners must, at all events, answer to the country imposing the blockade, for the acts of persons employed by them; otherwise, by sacrificing the ship, there would be a ready escape for the cargo, for the benefit of which the fund was intended.'" (See also The James Cook, Edwards, 261; The Arthur, ib., 202; The Exchange, ib., 40; 1st Kent., 2d edition, 144, 146; Olivera vs. Union Insurance Company, 3d Wheat. Rep., 194. See also Wheaton's note to the same case.)

The principle upon this point, to be extracted from the authorities, may be thus briefly stated:A belligerent blockade is designed to interdict exportation from, as well as importation to, the blockaded port. The act of taking on board a cargo in a blockaded port-even though not followed by an overt attempt at egress, is of itself a violation of the belligerent right, subjecting the property to condemnation because it is an act of direct assistance of the traffic of exportation-the presumption of intent to violate the blockade-in the absence of countervailing evidence, from the mere fact of taking in a cargo.

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tween the

belligerent

right, recog

national law,

Distinction be- The intelligent reader cannot fail to perceive blockade as a that the blockade ordered by the proclamations of the President of the United States, of the 19th nized by inter- and 27th of April, 1861 (vide appendix), of the and that pro- ports of that portion of the territory of the United United States States whose people are in a condition of insurrec government of tion against the government, bears no resemblance, own ports, and in purpose or character, to the blockade known to that distinc- the law of nations, and recognized as one of the

claimed by the

a portion of its

the effects of

tion.

rights of war, which sovereign belligerent nations may exercise against each other. The established rules by which the questions are determined, of what constitutes a violation of a blockade, and what are the penalties for such violation, would no doubt be alike applicable-but here all analogy ceases. To the failure to perceive, or at least to acknowledge, this entire want of analogy, a failure which cannot but be regarded as singularly unac. countable in such distinguished publicists as the Earl of Ellenborough, the Earl of Derby, and Lord Brougham (vide Debates in the British House of Lords, of May 16, 1861), may be fairly attributed the unfortunate position assumed by the British gov. ernment toward the rebellion existing in the United States.

The blockade known and recognized as such by the law of nations, is the exercise of the right pos sessed by belligerent nations as a lawful right of war, to close the ports of its adversary by an efficient force, thereby to inflict a blow upon its trade and commerce, and so to cripple its means and resources, as eventually to compel a pacification by a reparation of those injuries which constituted the causa belli.

When a nation, for any cause, sees fit

to order the closing of any of its own ports, it is perfectly obvious that such an act cannot be induced by any such motive-that it is not, in any manner the exercise of a technical belligerent right, but is simply the exercise of that power, inherent in every nation, to regulate and control its internal affairs in such manner as it may deem best calculated to promote its interests, its safety, its exist

ence

The learned peers of England assume that the blockade ordered by the government of the United States, is the exercise of a strictly technical belligerent right, and therefore that that government ought not, and has no right to complain, if foreign nations extend towards the rebellious people whose ports are closed by the blockade, the rights of lawful belligerents. These consist of the right of commissioning private vessels of war, by letters of marque, to seize and condemn as lawful prize of war, the ves sels of the blockading power, without subjecting the captors to the penalties of piracy denounced by the proclamation of the United States government. And also the right of such letters of marque to -seek and claim the shelter and asylum of the ports of Great Britain as a neutral nation, with such prizes as they may capture, there to be protected until a court of admiralty of their own jurisdiction may pronounce a lawful sentence of condemnation, for it is now a settled principle of international law, that where no special treaty provision intervenes (and none such exists between the United States and Great Britain), a neutral nation has no power to interfere with the prizes brought into its ports by the vessels of either of the lawful belli

·

gerent parties (vide Robinson's Coll. Mar. p. 30, et seq.; Loccenius de Jur. Mar., Lib. II., c. iv., § 7; De Martens, Liv. VIII., c. vii., § 312; Manning's Law of Nations, p. 387, et seq.) In this assumption of the learned peers lies the great error.

The preamble to the proclamation of the Presi dent of the United States, of April 19th, 1861 (to which that of the 27th of the same month is mere ly supplementary), very briefly, but with perfect precision, recites the causes which are the occasion of the measure. They are two-fold. First, that an insurrection exists in that portion of the nation in which the ports are ordered to be closed, which operates to prevent the execution of the laws of the nation for the collection of the revenue, passed pursuant to a provision of the Constitution of the United States requiring a uniformity in the duties imposed upon importations; and, second, that the persons engaged in the insurrection, by a most unwarrantable assumption of the rights of lawful belligerents, threaten to issue letters of marque, authorizing those to whom they are granted to assault the persons, and seize and confiscate the vessels and property of citizens of the United States engaged in commerce upon the seas.

It is therefore solely for the purpose of securing the uniform enforcement of its own revenue laws, enacted pursuant to the provisions of its own constitution, and to prevent, as far as possible, one portion of its people from committing piratical depredations upon the lives and property of the others, that this most salutary order is proclaimed, as a measure of domestic peace, and of national security.

No one, surely, whose intelligence is not clouded by prejudice, or obscured by selfish considerations, can fail to perceive the broad distinction between that blockade which is proclaimed by a sovereign nation, of a portion of its own ports, for the pur pose of quelling a domestic insurrection, and compelling the misguided insurgents, to "unthread the rude eye of rebellion, and welcome home again discarded peace," and that which is ordered and enforced by a sovereign government of the ports of its for eign enemy, for the purpose of paralyzing his pow. er, and compelling him to repair his wrongs, and submit to the terms of equitable pacification. The latter is the technical belligerent right, the right of war, the right of a sovereign government, recognized by the law of nations, to inflict a blow upon the commerce of the adversary, although it be with the incidental abridgment of the accustomed commerce of neutral nations.

The former, while it is also a belligerent right resulting from a state of war, is the right which every nation possesses by the law of nature, which is above and beyond all mere international prescriptions, the great law of self-preservation, to take all such measures, and adopt all such internal regulations as may be requisite to maintain its own unity, its own nationality, its own supremacy (upon which alone rest the safety, prosperity and happiness of the citizen), against the unlawful combinations of its own subjects, leagued together in the traitorous design to overthrow and destroy it.

The distinction is so broad, and so patent to the common understanding, that any thing beyond its mere statement would seem hardly justifiable in an

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