Its neutrality would not be compromised by the shipment from its shores, and the carriage by its merchantmen, of any quantity of cannon, rifles, and gunpowder.

Its effect is to enable the Government to prohibit and punish, from abundant caution, many acts on the part of its subjects for which it would incur no international liability.

The power thus given has no relation to international duty, and is mainly intended to be exercised, in the way of self-protection, when Great Britain is, or is likely to be, engaged in war.

The object of the enactment is to enable the Government to retain in the country articles of which we may ourselves be in need, or to prevent them from reaching the hands of our enemies.

There is indeed a widely prevalent confusion, even in quarters which ought to be better informed, between two topics which it is essential to keep separate--viz. the shipment of contraband, and the use of neutral territory as a base for…

It is bound to stand aside, and make no claim to protect from the recognised consequences of their acts such of its subjects as are engaged in carriage of contraband.

So far as the neutral Government is concerned, its subjects may carry even cannon and gunpowder to a belligerent port, while the belligerent, on the other hand, who is injured by the trade may take all necessary stops to suppress it.

Such is the compromise which long experience has shown to be both reasonable and expedient between the, in themselves irreconcilable, claims of neutral and belligerent States.

A British trader may, therefore, at his own proper risk, despatch as many thousand tons of coal as he chooses, just as he may despatch any quantity of rifles or bayonets, to Vladivostok or to Nagasaki.

It has long been settled international law that a neutral Government, while, on the one hand, it is precluded from itself supplying munitions to a belligerent, is, on the other hand, not bound to prevent private individuals from so acting.

I am especially desirous of emphasising the proposition that carriage of contraband is no offence, either against international law or against the law of England.

International law here, as always, deals with relations between States, and has nothing to do with the contraband trader, except in so far as it deprives him of the protection of his Government.

The law of nations neither prohibits the acts in question nor prescribes penalties to be incurred by the doers of them.

What it really does is to define the measures to which a belligerent may resort for the suppression of such acts, without laying himself open to remonstrance from the neutral Government to which the traders implicated owe allegiance.

Beyond this, international law speaks at present with an uncertain voice, leaving to each Power to resort to such measures in detail as may be necessary to ensure the due performance of a duty which, as expressed in general terms, is…

There can, however, be no doubt that a better definition of the mode in which a neutral Power should prevent abusive use of the asylum afforded by its ports and waters is urgently required.

A neutral State restrains, under certain circumstances, the export of coal, not because coal is contraband, but because such export is converting the neutral territory into a base of belligerent operations.

Petersburg in the case of the Calchas, so far as it recognises the existence of a conditional class of contraband, and that raw cotton, as res ancipitis usus, must be treated in accordance with the rules applicable to goods belonging to…

This half-hearted course of action painfully recalls certain vicious methods of legislation by reference, and was additionally uncalled for, since, as has been shown by recent events, about two-thirds of the rules laid down by the…

The straightforward announcement made by the United States in their Note of January 25 is surely far preferable.

You can only blockade the ports of your enemy, and the South African Republics have no port of their own.

Carriage of contraband" implies (1) that the goods carried are fit for hostile use; (2) that they are on their way to a hostile destination.

It was held that contraband goods, although bona fide on their way to a neutral port, might be condemned, if intended afterwards to reach the enemy by another ship or even by means of land carriage--Bermuda (3 Wallace); Peterhoff (5…

A consignment to Lorenzo Marques, connected as is the town by only forty miles of railway with the Transvaal frontier, would seem to be well within the principles of the Civil War cases as to "continuous voyages.

It would be disastrous if shipowners and insurers were to assume, that a neutral vessel, if destined for a neutral port, is necessarily safe from capture.