convoy, the Danish commander, in pursuance of his instructions, firing on the boats of the English search party. Mr. Merry, the chargé d'affaires at Copenhagen, immediately demanded an explanation and disavowal of the action of the Danish captain.1 Count Bernstorff, however, far from complying with the demand, sought to justify the conduct of the officer, coupling with a denial of the right of belligerents to search merchantmen under convoy an answering demand for reparation.2

The dispute was still unsettled when on July 25, 1800, the Danish and British navies again came into hostile collision, and Captain Krabbe of the Freya, a Danish frigate convoying six merchantmen, having refused to permit the search of his charge in the British Channel, was, after a smart action with a British squadron, brought in with the convoy to the Downs. The Danish Government in their turn demanded prompt satisfaction for this most public insult to their neutral national flag, and an immediate restitution of the captured vessels. But Great Britain showed no sign of a willingness to yield. Lord Whitworth was instantly despatched on a special mission to Copenhagen, but a British fleet entered the Sound to lend weight to his representations. A lively passage at arms ensued, Great Britain defending the action of her officers as grounded in the plainest principles of the law of nations, whilst Count Bernstorff treated the capture of the convoy as an altogether unwarranted invasion of neutral rights. Finally, however, the negotiators agreed on August 29, 1800, upon a convention for the temporary settlement of the contested question.5 But a new and more formidable disputant was already in the field. On August 16, 1800, the Emperor Paul, to whom the Danish Government had made early approaches, issued a declaration wherein, reciting the history of the recent action of the English with regard to neutral convoys, he invited Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia to concur with him in measures for the establishment in full force of the principles of the Armed Neutrality. Nor did Paul content himself with empty

1Mr. Merry to Count Bernstorff, April 10, 1800: Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, p. 347.

2Count Bernstorff to Mr. Merry, April 19, 1800; Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, p. 350.

3Count de Wedel-Jarlsberg to Lord Grenville, July 29, 1800; ibid. ii, p. 353. Memoirs and Correspondence of the Marques Wellesley, vol. ii, p. 116. 4Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, pp. 359 et seq.

5 Martens, Recueil, vol. vii, p. 426.

"Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, p. 368.

words. Apprised of the appearance of the English squadron in the Sound, he ordered the sequestration of all English property within his dominions. The arrival of the news of the signature, on the very day (Aug. 29) of the issue of his edict, of the Anglo-Danish convention momentarily disconcerted his plans, but, a new source of irritation against England being inopportunely supplied by the non-fulfilment of his singular Maltese dreams, he started afresh on his career of violence. An embargo was laid on British shipping in Russian ports, and, when two British vessels made their escape by force from their anchorage in the port of Narva, a third which remained was committed to the flames. Nor were other Powers wanting to excite to frenzy a brain but too palpably disordered. Spain lent fuel to the conflagration by complaining of the irregular impressment by an English squadron of a Swedish galliot for the purpose of cutting out a couple of Spanish frigates in the harbour of Barcelona,1 and Prussia supported her in an extraordinary and altogether unjustifiable demand upon Sweden for the release of the captured vessels. It was a singular view of neutral rights which was expounded by these strange allies Spain excluded all Swedish vessels from her ports by way of reprisal for the refusal of Sweden to be hurried into forcible measures against England, and Prussian troops entered the ports of the neutral city of Hamburg because an Embden contraband trader captured by the English had been driven by stress of weather into the sheltering harbour of Cuxhaven."

But of little avail with the Fowers of the North were arguments merely verbal.

In December, 1800, Denmark, Sweden and Prussia united with Russia in the second armed neutrality.

The guiding principles of the new league were set out in the main in five articles, which added to the four rules of 1780 a fifth dealing with the subject of convoy.

1Ortolan, Dipl. de la Mer, tom. ii, liv. 3, ch. i, pp. 30-31, and Pièces Justificatives B.

2See the correspondence between the Spanish and Swedish Governments, Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, pp. 374–381.

3Ibid. ii, pp. 381-387.

The four Powers agreed upon measures to enforce the rules:

(1) "Que tout vaisseau peut naviguer librement de port en port, et sur les côtes des nations en guerre.

(2) "Que les effets appartenans aux sujets des dites puissances en guerre soient libres sur les vaisseaux neutres, à l'exception des marchandises de contrebande.

Denmark, taken to task by Great Britain in respect of her accession to a combination for the support of principles diametrically opposed to the spirit of the convention but just concluded, unhesitatingly avowed her adhesion to the Northern Alliance, and called upon her questioner to admit "Que l'abandon provisoire et momentané, non d'un principe dont la question est restée indécise, mais d'une mesure dont le droit n'a jamais été, ni ne scauroit jamais être contesté, ne se trouve nullement en opposition avec les principes généraux et permanens, relativement auxquels les puissances du Nord sont sur le point de rétablir un concert, qui loin de pouvoir compromettre leur neutralité, n'est destiné qu'à la raffermir."

But Great Britain, now more free than in 1780 to deal with the selfconstituted prophets of neutral right, was in no humor to stomach either the veiled hostility of Bernstorff or the overweening insolence2 of Haugwitz. A war of embargoes speedily led on to open rupture. Parker and Nelson forced the passage of the Sound, and crushed the Danish naval power in the bloody battle of Copenhagen; the Danish and Swedish possessions in the West Indies surrendered in quick succession to Duckworth and Trigge; and British troops occupied with

(3) "Que pour déterminer ce qui caractérise un port bloqué, on n'accorde cette dénomination qu'à celui, où il y a, par la disposition de la puissance qui l'attaque avec des vaisseaux arrêtés et suffisamment proches, un danger évident d'entrer et que tout bâtimens naviguant vers un port bloqué ne pourra être regardé d'avoir contrevenu à la présente Convention, que lorsqu'après avoir été averti par le Commandant du blocus de l'état du port, il tâchera d'y pénétrer en employant la force ou la ruse.

(4) "Que les vaisseaux neutres ne peuvent être arrêtés que sur de justes causes et faits évidents, qu'ils soient jugés sans retard, que la procédure soit toujours uniforme, prompte et légale, et que chaque fois, outre les dédommagemens qu'on accorde à ceux qui ont fait des pertes, sans avoir été en contrevention, il soit rendu une satisfaction complette pour l'insulte faite au pavillon de leurs Majestés.

(5) "Que la déclaration de l'Officier, commandant le vaisseau ou les vaisseaux de la Marine Royale ou Impériale, qui accompagneront le convoi d'un ou de plusieurs bâtimens marchands, que son convoi n'a à bord aucune inarchandise de contrebande, doit suffire pour qu'il n'y ait lieu à aucune visite sur son bord ni à celui des bâtimens de son convoi."

Conventions between Russia and Sweden, Russia and Denmark and Russia and Prussia (Dec., 1800), Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, pp. 393, 402, 409. 1Count Bernstorff to Mr. Drummond, Dec. 31, 1800. vol. ii, p. 417.

Martens, Supplément,

2Count Haugwitz to Lord Carysfort, Feb. 12, 1801. Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, pp. 431 et seq.

3April 2, 1801.

4Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, p. 466.

out a show of resistance Serampore and Tranquebar.1 Humbled at home and stripped of all their foreign dominions, the Danes were in no condition to prolong an unequal struggle, and the cruel murder of F'aul2 opened a speedy way to the accommodation of differences. Early in June, 1801, a maritime convention3 was signed at St. Petersburg between the ministers of George III and the new Emperor Alexander. The treaty may be regarded as a compromise. Great. Britain, confirming the definition of contraband set out in her last treaty of commerce with Russia, agreed expressly to adopt three principles of the armed neutrality which she had not hitherto contested. She admitted the right of neutrals to navigate freely between the ports and on the coasts of nations at war, she acknowledged that blockade to be binding must be effective, and she assented to the necessity for the administration by belligerents in their dealings with neutrals of speedy and uniform justice. But she vindicated against the neutral Powers the right of search of merchantmen under convoy as exercised by men-of-war, and established the liability to seizure by a hostile captor of goods being actually the property of the subject of a belligerent laden under the neutral flag.1

WESTLAKE: International Law, Part II, War. Second edition, Cambridge, 1913.

John Westlake. Contemporary British publicist; born 1828; Whewell professor of international law at the University of Cambridge, 1888-1908.

Page 263.-The compromise between belligerents and neutrals is, however, subject to the question whether there is anything peculiar in

Memoirs and Correspondence of the Marques Wellesley, vol. ii, chap. v. 2Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury, vol. iv, pp. 54–56. 3Martens, Supplément, vol. ii, p. 476.

It is agreed by Article III:

"Que les effets embarqués sur les vaisseaux neutres seront libres, à l'exception de la contrebande de guerre et des propriétés ennemies; et il est convenu de ne pas comprendre au nombre des dernières les marchandises du produit, du crû ou de la manufacture des pays en guerre, qui auroient été acquises par des sujets de la puissance neutre, et seroient transportées pour leur compte; lesquelles marchandises ne peuvent être exceptées en aucun cas de la franchise accordée au pavillon de la dite puissance." Rule 2.

the character of the investment which neutrals have accepted as equivalent to siege, and on this we meet with a long and great controversy which still exists if the Declaration of London shall not be found to have settled it. One point has always been certain, namely, that, whether the blockade be a commercial or a military one, there must be a real danger to the blockade-runner in crossing the line of the investment, independent of any danger which he may run of being caught earlier with the intention of crossing it, or later after having crossed it. A line which it is not in itself highly dangerous to try to pass can not be that of an investment, nor can it affect with technical guilt either the intention to pass it formed at a distance, or the fact of its having been passed. This is expressed as follows by the Declaration of Paris:

4. Blockades, in order to be binding, must be real, that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.

If "really to prevent access" were taken literally, the successful crossing the line by one blockade-runner would prove the blockade to be void, which has never been contended. The meaning therefore must be, "to make the attempt at access highly dangerous." But, this being so, a question remains as to the method by which the danger may be created. The continental Powers, including Holland herself after her relative decline in naval power, have usually maintained that a blockade is only valid in law if the danger of ingress or egress arises from the cannon either of ships, stationary or sufficiently near one another, or of works on land. This is laid down, with more or less variety of expression, in the treaty of 1742 between France and Denmark, in that of 1753 between Holland and the Two Sicilies, in the declarations and treaties of armed neutrality in 1780, in the various adhesions of other continental States to that armed neutrality or its rules, and in the declarations and treaties of armed neutrality in 1800.2

Effectifs in the original, which means "real," not "producing an effect," as effective, which is the official translation, usually means in English. So also whenever an English writer mentions an effective blockade, he must be understood to mean a real one, that is a real investment, and not to be adding any further condition to its reality.

2In several of these pieces the place to be blockaded is described as attacked, but considering the practice of the eighteenth century, it must be admitted that this arose only from habit, or at least was done without an intention to require a real attack. An exception to that interpretation is, however, furnished by the treaty of 1787 between France and Russia, in which the rule of the armed