The force employed seems not to have been in excess of what might lawfully be used, either for the arrest of an enemy's neutral transport or for barring the progress of a hostile expedition.
Holland assesses that the force used against the Kowshing was lawful in the context of international law.
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The Declaration of London has, most fortunately, never been ratified by the Government of Great Britain.
This power has been so freely exercised, and large portions of the Declaration, not thereby affected, have proved to be so inapplicable to modern conditions, as disclosed by the war, that the document, so far from providing reliable…
It would be calamitous should a practice be introduced of attempting to cure the imperfect expression of a treaty by tacking on to it an equally authoritative reasoned commentary, likely, as in the present case, to be enormously longer…
It is surely notorious that the delegates of a Power, by agreeing to the draft of a treaty, give to it no international validity, which results only when the treaty has been ratified by their Government.
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