Government believes that the arbitrators would search in vain... in the general practice of maritime nations, for any proof of a duty incumbent on neutral Governments to prevent their subjects from supplying belligerents with ships adapted to warlike use, nor would they find any distinction drawn in this respect between the sale and delivery of a vessel built to order and that of a vessel not built to order." Chancellor Kent was even of opinion that the practice of nations allowed a neutral Government to supply troops under treaty, to a belligerent, without thereby forfeiting its neutrality. Moreover, the actual practice of States did not forbid the supply of coal to a war vessel in neutral ports before the war of 1861. In all these cases it is evident that this test of international obligation is valueless to a State which wishes to fulfil its duties honourably.

The other view of the basis of international duty is founded on the great conception that States have a moral sense, like individuals in a civilized community, and as such have duties to one another which arise solely from the possession of that sense, and have no reference whatever to any "fear of violent retaliation."

The submission of the celebrated Alabama Claims to arbitration by Great Britain was an attempt, generous but unfortunate, by this country, to do its duty as a member of the company of States, towards the other members, without any reference to the fear or the expediency which the cynic and the utilitarian discover in all international actions,

It is now recognized that a State in the position of a neutral should not only itself abstain from tendering any help whatever to either of two belligerents, but, further, should do its best to restrain its subjects from doing the like. It was in this spirit that the last Foreign Enlistment Act of 1871 was framed. The Royal Commissioners in 1868, on the results of whose labours the Act was framed, said, "We have not felt ourselves bound to consider whether we were

exceeding what could actually be required by international law, but we are of opinion that if those recommendations should be adopted, the municipal law of this realm available for the enforcement of neutrality will acquire increased efficiency, and will, so far as we can see, have been brought into full conformity with your Majesty's international obligations." The Act itself, as we have before stated, gives effect to the sense of responsibility for the acts of its subjects which the War of 1861 so clearly brought home to this country, especially as regards the building or equipping of ships of war in the course of trade, for belligerents, or supplying them with coal, or enlisting in their service.

If it is no part of the duty of a neutral State to place any restraint on its subjects' dealings in arms and munitions with a belligerent, it is surely not concerned with the way in which the subject disposes of his services. Yet the law, which forbids so stringently the departure of a single neutral recruit, offers no obstacle to the issue of unlimited supplies of arms and munitions to the belligerents.

If we turn, now, to the opinions of other text-writers on this subject, we find a succession of inconsistencies in their statements of a truly remarkable character.

Bynkershoek,

it is true, as a practical statesman, clearly gives his opinion that there is no difference in principle between supplying a belligerent with weapons and supplying him with men. If the one is allowed, then the other should be also. “Quod juris est," he says, "in instrumentis bellicis idem esse puto in militibus apud amicum populum comparandis." M. Bluntschli and M. Calvo, among modern writers, both seem to hesitate on the subject, and eventually deliver themselves of the opinion that large commercial dealings in arms and munitions of war, between a neutral subject and a belligerent, are unlawful, but that this is not so with small transactions, thereby forcibly recalling the argument of the young person in Midshipman Easy, who admitted the illegitimacy of her child,

but pleaded that the offence was condoned because it was such a very little one.

The authors of the Case for the United States, at the Geneva Arbitration, draw the same distinction. They first (p. 84) "assert with confidence that a neutral ought not to permit a belligerent to use the neutral soil as the main, if not the only, base of its military supplies"; yet on the very next page, mindful of the fact that their fellow-citizens are the greatest sinners of all in the matter of contraband traffic, they are careful to allude to "the well-settled right of a neutral to manufacture and sell to either belligerent during a war, arms, munitions, and military supplies." If there be a "well-settled right" to sell such things, why should the quantity make any difference? M. Calvo, it is true, subsequently prepared some règles for the general guidance of the nations of the world, in which the trade in arms, whether in large or small quantities, was prohibited; but the value of the prohibition is somewhat damaged by the fact that it is coupled with a provision that in case of a blockade no ship should be liable to capture for attempting a breach of it until it should have been once warned by one of the blockading squadron, and an "annotation" of the fact placed on the ship's papers. This means that in future an intending blockaderunner (like the dog in English law, which was supposed to be allowed "one worry") would be enabled to make at least one clear attempt at breach of the blockade, with the unspeakable comfort of knowing that no worse thing could come upon him than an "annotation" on his ship's papers. Professor Westlake, in an article in the Revue de Droit International (vol. 2), after advocating the strong measure of making blockade-running a breach of municipal law, is of opinion, nevertheless, that the trade in arms and munitions of war is lawful for the subjects of a neutral country provided they have dealt in them beforehand. If the trade is lawful at all, the reason for this proviso is exceedingly obscure. A

war creates an immense demand for a certain article of commerce, and a neutral trader undertakes to meet that demand. What conceivable difference can it make in the principle of the thing, whether he was in the habit of supplying that article beforehand or not? He is either free to trade in it or he is not.

M. Ortolan, a once celebrated French International lawyer, found a saving distinction between the sale of a ship of war by a neutral subject to a belligerent as a "ready-made" article of contraband and between building it to his order. The first he considers lawful, and the second unlawful, but the reasoning on which the difference rests does not appear.

M.

Mr. Lorimer (Revue de Droit International, vol. 2) adheres to "the grand principle of free exchange," and suggests that if the German Government had sold back to the French the arms captured at Sedan, they would thereby have themselves received the gains which later in the war found their way to the neutral traders of England and America, a most significant fact for the statesman and the economist of the future. Masse thinks that the goods only become contraband at the moment when they go out of the country in a direction where, by their nature, they are so, but not before. It is the frequent occurrence of statements of the foregoing description which has tended more than anything else to bring the great subject of International Law into ridicule with many logically-minded persons. The plain and vigorous language of Sir Robert Phillimore is in marked contrast to these confused utter

ances.

"If the fountains of International Justice have been correctly pointed out in a former volume, and if it be the true character of a neutral to abstain from every act which may better or worsen the condition of a belligerent, the unlawfulness of any such trade is a necessary conclusion from these premises. What does it matter where the neutral supplies one belligerent with the means of attacking another? Is the

cannon, or the sword, or the recruit who is to use them, less dangerous to the belligerent because they were purchased or he was enlisted within the limits of neutral territory? Surely the locus in quo is wholly beside the mark." The duties imposed on nations who wish to enjoy peace in the middle of the evils of war is not to put arms in the hands of either belligerent.

Turning now to the more solid arguments of the opponents of any interference by a neutral State in the export of arms and munitions by its subjects, we find that substantially they amount to four, viz. :-

(1) That neutrals have a right to follow their ordinary trades as in time of peace without reference to a war in which they have no concern.

(2) That it is impossible to define or limit the term contraband" for the purpose of State interference, or to obtain general assent to any such definition among the nations.

(3) That any interference in such trade on the part of the State would create an intolerable burden of responsibility.

(4) That as long as a State has the money to pay for them, it has a right to purchase its arms and munitions where it pleases.

(1) The first argument has been so frequently reiterated by the great body of writers who uphold the existing state of things, that it requires to be dealt with at some length. It is usual among that body to rely on two Biblical statements of the case to justify the faith that is in them, so we proceed to set them out verbatim. "On what ground of reason or justice," said Lord Cockburn, "should their (neutral traders') right of peaceful trade be taken away, and their interests thus be damaged by reason of a war in which they have no concern?" In 1793 Mr. Jefferson wrote: "Our citizens have always been free to make, vend, and export arms. It is the