extraordinary pretension of prohibiting to neutrals in time of war all trade with the enemy, which they were not allowed to carry on in time of peace; for these pretensions, authorities, more or less satisfactory, were adduced from the laws and usages of the worst periods of European history. Whether the case of England was made out, even on grounds like these, is a question which has not been settled, and is hardly worth examining. That barbarous practices should have prevailed in barbarous times among barbarous nations, is neither improbable nor unnatural; the wonder is, that a civilized nation should consider the existence of them, under such circumstances, as a justification of their continuance in an age of civilization and humanity. By going a little farther back, it would be easy to find authorities of still more venerable antiquity in favour of still more savage usages; such as killing and enslaving prisoners. If we reject with contempt the ideas of the dark ages on every other point of philosophy, by what fatality is it, that we feel ourselves obliged to conform to them, however absurd and cruel, in the law of nations, the largest and most important division of practical morality?

All the reasonings of the British civilians on these subjects are tainted with the enormous error of considering the cause of war as favourable, and

that of peace as unfavourable; of supposing that the pretensions of belligerants must be liberally construed, and followed out into all their consequences, while those of nations at peace must be restricted and narrowed down to the bare letter. A large construction in favour of life is the humane maxim at Westminster hall; but at Doctors' commons the large construction is in favour of death. Some of our own politicians even, in the frenzy of party spirit, were found to echo the principle, that the rights of belligerants are paramount to those of neutrals; as if industry and commerce were the curse and scourge of society, and war the principal instrument of civilization. Hence was derived the justification of what was called the rule of 1756, by which neutrals were prohibited from carrying on any trade in time of war, which they were not allowed in time of peace. This pretended justification supposed, that the right of neutrals to trade with one belligerant power was an unjust encroachment on the right of the other to annoy his enemy as much as possible; and that although authorized by usage, it may and ought to be narrowed down to the strictest limits; but that the right of annoying the enemy is, on the contrary, a favourable one, which may be pushed to the fullest extent, and through all its consequences

without regard to the interest even of innocent third persons. By constantly looking at the subject in this point of view, the British civilians became at last so completely blind to its real character, that they seriously argued the cause of war, as if it were the cause of humanity. One of the most remarkable pamphlets in defence of these pretensions bore the title of War in Disguise, or the Frauds of the neutral flags. The natural effect of commerce and industry, to escape by indirect means from some of the shackles imposed upon them in the most arbitrary and violent manner, is here described, as appears even from the title, not only as illegal, but as hostile and cruel. The benevolent writer melts into tears at the idea of a blood-thirsty and hard-hearted merchant undertaking to evade the kind regulations established by a belligerant in the common interest of humanity, for the sanguinary purpose of furnishing the comforts and necessaries of life to those who want them. I am far from approving irregularity, as such, in any case, especially when, as in this, it is necessarily accompanied with perjury. But, after all, the cause of neutrals, supposing even their proceedings to be in contravention of the arbitrary laws of war, is the cause of humanity and civilization. If trade sometimes puts on a mask, the

disguise may be wrong, but it is peace that wears it, and not war. Should industry and commerce obtain, in difficult times, some slight advantages even by irregular means, the case, I grant, is hard for the British cruisers who are thus cheated of their prey; but is there any thing in it, at which a professed friend of humanity, like Mr Stephen, the president of so many bible and missionary societies, the member of so many institutions for suppressing vice in all its shapes and promoting the public good, need to take so much offence? The war, which neutrals carried on in disguise in these days of trouble was the war of civilization with brutal force; and if stratagems are justifiable in all other cases, I see but little reason why this most sacred and necessary of all should be exempt from the indulgence. War in disguise was indeed a mode of presenting the subject more absurd, if possible, than false. But power, it is somewhere observed, is never ridiculous, and the truth of this maxim has perhaps on no occasion been more fully proved, than by the fact, that such pretensions and ideas as these were received in any other way than by a general chorus of contempt.

The inconveniences and vexations, necessarily produced by the pretended belligerant right of search, even when the exercise of it is kept within

decent bounds, have always been sensibly felt by neutrals; and they produced, in the time of the American war, the celebrated coalition of the Armed Neutrality, which was revived again for a short time during the late contest. The leading principle maintained by this coalition was the exemption of the private property of enemies from pillage in the hands of third persons, a very imperfect and inadequate assertion of the rights of humanity, but one to which, unfortunately, the most humane and civilized nation in the world could never be brought to consent. As she was also at that time and has been ever since the principal maritime power, the opposite and barbarous construction of public law is still maintained. It would have been, as is justly observed by a German writer, a fit object for the attention of the congress of Vienna to determine the rights of neutrals at sea, and to establish a code of maritime law on the basis of common humanity. But in this particular, the presence and preponderance of Great Britain in the congress exercised as fatal an influence on the interest of all the other states, and the general good, as those of Russia did upon the balance of power and the security of the west of Europe.

*

* Manuscript from South Germany; an anonymous work.