the domicil of the father, the subsequent marriage would work legitimation."

It hardly needs to be stated that it is a public evil that the same person should be regarded as legitimate in one civilised country and illegitimate in another. It is perhaps a greater scandal when a British subject is held legitimate in one part of the Empire and illegitimate in another. In his judgment in In re Goodman's Trusts, James, L.J., devotes some very energetic observations to this aspect of the question. It is, of course, impossible always and altogether to avoid these evils, so long as communities differ on the

forbidden degrees " and the extent of each other's jurisdiction in divorce.

The case, however, of a marriage recognised on all hands as having been validly performed between competent contracting parties is different, and the denial of legitimacy to some, while it is conceded to others, of a group of antenati, all of whom are legitimate by the personal law of their father-as in the Goodman case-does not seem to be justified on any ground of morality or jealousy of jurisdiction. When the domicil of the husband at the date of the marriage is proved to be not English, the English Courts forthwith discard the characteristic rules of English law as to the incidents and effects of marriage, and proceed to apply other rules. Antecedently, one would have said that the only logical course to take was to enquire what consequences the law of the husband's domicil attached to his marriage, so far, at all events, as status of persons and rights in movables were concerned. Such a rule seems to be justified by considerations of good sense and international comity. But for In re Wright's Trust, and the other cases referred to, one could say that it was the rule of the English Courts. If the law laid down in In ve Wright's Trust and incidentally approved in the other cases is correct, it seems that in the case of the marriage of a domiciled foreigner the law to be

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applied by the English Courts is neither the lex fori nor the law of the husband's domicil, but tertium quid. In such a case as that of the Goodman family the tests of English law would have made all the children, save those born in wedlock, illegitimate. Tested by the law of the husband's domicil at the marriage, all, it seems, were equally legitimate. Tested by the tertium quid, one of the antenati was legitimate, the others not. The practical result is that the English Courts not only impose on themselves the labour of ascertaining the husband's domicil at the time of the marriage, which is inevitable, and the legal consequences of the marriage of that person, according to the law of the country of domicil, but also the seemingly gratuitous labour of enquiring into, and drawing conclusions from the man's previous history, though the personal law of the husband declines the enquiry and disregards the conclusions. I venture to think that it is sufficient, the foreign domicil of the husband at the time of the marriage being proved, to ascertain, by evidence of foreign experts or otherwise, what effects the law of the country of domicil attached to the marriage, and to concede those effects so far as status of persons and rights in movables are concerned.

I am not prepared to say that an argument of some plausibility might not have been framed against the legitimation, per subsequens matrimonium, of the bastard child of a domiciled English woman, on the score of its deriving its domicil of origin from her, and it is singular that no weight seems to have been attached to this circumstance in cases in which it occurred; see Munro v. Munro, 7 Cl. & F. 842, and In re Goodman's Trusts.

The notion that no child is legitimated by the subsequent marriage of its parents, unless it received a capacity for legitimation derived from the putative father's domicil at the time of conception or birth seems to me to have originated in Vice-Chancellor Wood's view of the doctrine

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of legitimatio per subsequens matrimonium, as being based on the fiction of a marriage prior to the conception. It may well be that this is so historically, but there seems good reason for thinking that, even in Scotland, the fiction had been practically discarded before 1856. That the

. doctrine of legitimatio per subsequens matrimonium should be still held not to apply to children born ex damnato coitu* is probably an instance of what is not unknown in legal history,-a rule originally based on reasons of one kind being retained and justified by reasons of another kind, the first set of reasons having been discarded as not squaring with modern modes of thought. If, then, this fiction be

. discarded, what reason is there for regarding the domicil of the husband, and his resulting personal law, at any other time than the actual date of the marriage? There is no other "act in the law" on which the question of legitimation can depend, and, if the English Courts are prepared, for the purpose of determining status of children and rights in movables, to regard, in any particular case, the personal law of the husband at the date of the contract, the only reasonable and consistent course seems to be to apply it thoroughly.

If a case like In ve Wright's Trust could come up in 1897 as res integra, I think the Court would adopt a ratio decidendi which would not expose this country to the reproach of “standing aloof in barbarous insularity from the rest of the civilised world.” What we stand to gain by the authoritative disapproval of the principles enunciated in In re Wright's Trust, and reiterated in the dicta in Udny v. Udny, In re Goodman's Trusts, In re Andros, and In re Grove, is the ability to state a rule of that chapter of English Law which treats of "private international” relations in terms which

* The capacity to marry must exist at all events at the birth. This is Lord Fraser's opinion with regard to the law of Scotland; see Parent and Child, p. 36.

will have the academic merits of simplicity and consistency, and the practical merits of promoting substantial justice between parties, and commanding the approval of the Courts and lawyers of other communities.

T. K. NUTTALL.

The Pacific Blockade of Crete. A good deal of misconception has arisen from the use of the term.“ Pacific Blockade.” A “ Blockade" is an act of one of two belligerent States precluding neutral ships from having access to, or egress from, a particular enemy port or coast. It is essentially a belligerent privilege directed primarily against neutrals, and, like the right of visitation and search and the doctrine of Contraband, the right to Blockade is a concession by neutrals to belligerents, arising out of the fundamental principles of Neutrality. A “Pacific Blockade," on the other hand, is essentially a belligerent or quasi-belligerent act of coercion directed not against neutrals, but against the State coerced. M. Perels, in his admirable article in the Revue de Droit International (Vol. 19, p. 244, et seq.), says: “Le Blocus pacifique n'est “autre chose que la fermeture des portes ou des districts

particuliers de la côte d'un pays en dehors du cas de “guerre déclarée et dans le but d'empêcher les relations “cominerciales maritimes." Professor T. E. Holland, in a recent letter to the Times,* in reply to an anonymous correspondentt, rightly says that it is “one of the various “ methods generically described as Reprisals

by which, without resort to war, pressure, topographically or

本

Times, 7th March, 1897.

+ Times, 5th March, 1897.

“ otherwise limited in extent, may be put upon an offending “State.” Any such operation is not, of course, “ Pacific,” except in a comparative sense. As Reis Effendi said, after Navarino, in his reply to the assurance that the Great Powers were still at peace with the Porte : “C'est “absolument comme si, cassant la tête d'un homme je “ l'assurais en même temps de mon amitié.” The term “Pacific,” in short, is merely a diplomatic amenity. The anonymous writer of the letter to the Times, above referred to, points out what he regards as two observations applicable to all historical instances of Pacific Blockade, namely—(I) that the Blockade has always been instituted by a strong Power to coerce a weak one, and "there is no instance of one of the Great Powers of the world employing such measures against another of like strength"; and (2) that the “majority in number and the most weighty in authority” of International Jurists have regarded the practice as indefensible. With regard to the latter of these considerations, no doubt many writers have condemned Pacific Blockade as contrary to International Law, but the real ground of objection has almost always been against such a Blockade purporting to bind or affect neutral or quasi-neutral States or subjects. The objections of Hautefeuille, Pistoye and Duverdy, Woolsey, Gessner, Fauchille and De Martens, are entirely based on this aspect of the question. Geffcken, in his reply to M. Perels' paper, was also mainly influenced by the same siderations, though he seems to object also on general moral grounds. The views of all these jurists and the conflicting views of such authorities as Heffter, Calvo, Cauchy, Bluntschli, Wharton, Ferguson, and others, are excellently summarized in the above-mentioned paper of M. Perels, the reply of M. Geffcken (see the Revue, Vol. 19, p. 377, et seq.), and an article by M. Bulmerinq in the Journal de Droit International Privé, for 1884 (p. 569).

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