of danger from the sea or of absolute necessity; and the twenty-four hours rule has been extended to public ships of war by Italy, France, England, the United States, and Holland. Probably it may now be looked upon as a regulation which is practically sure to be enforced in every war. Mr. Bernard says: The rule that when hostile ships meet in a neutral harbour the local authority may prevent one from sailing simultaneously with or immediately after the other, will not be found in all books on International Law. It is however a convenient and reasonable rule; it has gained, I think, sufficient foundation in usage; and the interval of twenty-four hours adopted during the last century in a few treaties and in some marine ordinances has been commonly accepted as a reasonable and convenient interval.'1 It will probably be found necessary to supplement the twenty-four hour rule by imposing some limit to the time during which belligerent vessels may remain in a neutral port when not actually receiving repairs. The insufficiency of the twentyfour hour rule, taken by itself, is illustrated by an 1 Hist. Acc. of the Neut. of Great Britain, p. 273. The treaties in which the exercise of this rule is provided for are all with the Barbary States. Bluntschli declares in unqualified terms that 'in strict law a ship of war cannot quit a neutral port for four-and-twenty hours after the departure of an enemy's vessel,' § 776 bis. If international law contained any such rule, a correlative duty of enforcing it would weigh upon the neutral; but of this I can find no indication. The neutral may take what precautions he chooses in order to hinder a fraudulent use being made of his ports provided he attains his object. If he prefers to rely upon the word of a commander there is nothing to prevent him. Even if the twenty-four hours rule becomes hardened by far longer practice than now sanctions it, the right of the neutral to vary his own port regulations can never be ousted. The rule can never be more than one to the enforcement of which a belligerent may trust in the absence of notice to the contrary. incident which occurred during the American Civil War. In the end of 1861, the United States corvette Tuscarora arrived in Southampton Waters with the object, as it ultimately appeared, of preventing the exit of the Confederate cruiser Nashville, which was then in dock. By keeping up steam, and having slips on her cable, so that the moment the Nashville moved, the Tuscarora should precede her, and claim priority of sailing, by moving and returning again within twenty-four hours, and by notifying and then postponing her own departure, the latter vessel attempted, and for some time was able, to blockade the Nashville within British waters. In order to guard against the repetition of such acts, it was ordered in the following January that during the continuance of hostilities, any vessel of war of either belligerent entering an English port, should be required to depart and to put to sea within twentyfour hours after her entrance into such port, except in case of stress of weather, or of her requiring provisions, or things necessary for the subsistence of her crew, or repairs;' in either of which cases the authorities of the port were ordered to require her to put to sea as soon as possible after the expiration of such period of twenty-four hours.' In 1870 the same rule was laid down; and the United States, unwilling to allow to others the license which she permitted to herself, adopted an identical regulation. It is, perhaps, not unlikely soon to become general.1 1 Bernard, 270; Neut. Laws Comms' Rep., Append. No. vi.; State Papers, lxxi. 167, 1871. 87 PART III. CHAPTER I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE RELATIONS OF BELLIGERENT STATES AND NEUTRAL INDIVIDUALS. principles § 32. THE general right possessed by a belligerent General of restraining commercial acts done by private persons of the law. which materially obstruct the conduct of hostilities, gives rise to several distinct groups of usage corresponding to different commercial relations between neutrals and the other belligerents. All trade divides itself into two great heads T+ consists either in the purchase or sale of goods, or in carrying them for hire from one place to another. The purchase of goods by a neutral is the subject of no belligerent restriction. The general principle that a neutral has a right to trade with his belligerent friend, necessarily covers a commerce by which the war can in no case be directly affected. The belligerent gains nothing else than his mercantile profit, and to forbid such trade would therefore be to forbid all trade. But by the sale of goods the neutral may provide his customer with articles which, either by their own nature, or from some peculiar need on the part of the belligerent, may be of special use in the conduct of hostilities. These, therefore, the enemy of the latter may intercept on their road after leaving neutral soil, and before delivery to the belligerent purchaser has transformed them into goods liable to seizure for another reason. Again, under the second head a neutral may send articles innocent in themselves for sale in places access to which the belligerent thinks it necessary for the successful issue of his war to forbid altogether, and which he is allowed to bar by so placing an armed force as to make approach dangerous; or the neutral may employ his ships in effecting a transport illicit because of the character of the merchandise or of the place to which it is taken; or finally he may associate his property with that of the belligerent in such manner as to show the existence of a community of interest, or an intention of using his neutral character to protect his friend. The effect of the various acts which fall under these heads differs with the degree of noxiousness which is attributed to them; but in all cases, as the possession of a right carries with it the further right to use the means necessary for its enforcement, the belligerent is allowed to inflict penalties of sufficient severity to be deterrent. The larger bodies of practice which have asserted themselves successfully with reference to these divisions, may on the whole be explained by the more or less reasonable application of the principle that a belligerent has the right to carry on his operations without obstruction. It is easy to see the relation to this principle of the prohibition to carry goods the supply of which may increase the strength of a belligerent, and of that to carry any goods to besieged places; and though the connection is less plain, it can still be discovered in the cases where, by associating himself with belligerent property, a neutral would, if left alone, impede the belligerent right of weakening and embarrassing his enemy by seizing his Exceptionproperty. But two exceptional practices must either al practice. be looked upon as abnormal, or must be explained by the admission of a different and very dangerous principle as a ground of international rule. cial block § 33. The better established of these customs arises Commerout of the right of barring access of innocent trade to an enemy's country, and under the name of commercial blockade has extended the prohibition beyond the area of purely military operations to all coasts which can be guarded by the fleet of the belligerent. A blockade which is, or which forms part of a military operation, may consist in a siege,-i.e. in an investment combined with an attack; or in a simple investment, of which the object is to reduce a place by famine; or in the denial to commerce of a portion of coast of indefinite extent, in order to embarrass the movements of a land force of the enemy which but for the blockade would draw its supplies, or a portion of them, from the sea. All these kinds of blockade are of course fully warranted by the right of a belligerent to carry out his operations of war without being obstructed by neutrals. But according to existing usage it would be legitimate, in a war between England and the United States, for the former power to blockade the whole Californian coast, while the only military operations were being conducted on the Atlantic seaboard and along the frontiers of Canada. To forbid all neutral commerce, when no immediate military end is to be served, and when the effect of the measure upon the ultimate issue of the war is so slight as usually to be almost inappreciable, is to contradict in the plainest manner the elementary principle that neutrals have a right, as a general rule, to trade with the enemy.1 If this principle can be 1 The right of blockade is founded not on any general un limited right to cripple the |
