consequence of a war of which, as individuals, they possibly did not approve, or else that they must arrange with the underwriters to pay both for ship and cargo, just as if they had perished by winds and waves. There is no reason to suppose that merchants and shipowners are less patriotic than other citizens; and if the arrangements here suggested to protect them against exceptional losses were adopted, I believe that the opposition of the Chambers of Commerce to the capture of property at sea would cease. But it must not be forgotten that to active and enterprising men time is money, and that no interest which they could demand would compensate them for being deprived of their property till the termination of the war. On this ground, it appears to me that the payment to the private owner by the Admiralty ought to be made at once. The moment that the prize court of the captor's country has decided that the prize is goodi.e., that it has been taken in accordance with what, in the meantime, must be held to be the laws of war, and if restored at all, will be restored only by a mixed commission named in the treaty of peace, or by some international prize court of appeal not yet instituted-then, if not even sooner, the owner's State in whose behalf it has been sacrificed, should compensate him for his private loss. Whether or not the State may ultimately succeed in recouping itself by means of an indemnity, is a public, not a private matter.

9th, Is the capture of private property forbidden from an international point of view, on the ground that its tendency is to render a single State supreme at sea?

There is unquestionably a feeling in Continental countries

that the naval supremacy of England is inconsistent with the presence of reciprocating will, and, as a necessary consequence, with international recognition. It is regarded as the counterpart of universal empire on land, and, when conjoined with the prodigious growth of our colonies, as being possibly a step in that direction; and it is on the ground that it tends to foster this supremacy that the form of naval warfare which we have been here discussing is really, though not ostensibly, objected to. The feeling would be wholly reasonable if the mercantile supremacy of England had resulted from any other cause than fair competition in open market, or if it were maintained by employing the warlike navy against the mercantile marine of other States for other than warlike purposes, and in time of war. But England has been more consistent than most countries in respecting neutral property under the enemy's flag; and now that she has gone the length of sparing even enemies' property when covered by the neutral flag, and would not, I presume, consider herself entitled to establish a mercantile blockade, she cannot be reproached with interfering with neutral carrying trade.

Then as regards the interests of her friends and neighbours in time of peace-so far from the presence of our armed ships being detrimental to foreign trade, they afford it its best protection. If men would remember to what prodigious dimensions the curse of piracy has often attained,--if they would refresh their memories as to the condition of the Mediterranean when the Roman Senate conferred on Pompey a commission embracing almost dictatorial powers, or of the

English Channel and the German Ocean when the first Lord High Admiral, or Tolphan, as he was called, was appointed in the reign of Henry III.,' they would have some conception of what the peaceful merchant owes to the omnipresence of a military and mercantile marine, which, in an age that has to cope with a proletariat more formidable than the world has ever seen, has made the sea safer than the streets. It is England that maintains the police of the planet; and if Continental trade does not flourish, it is not because the humblest skipper of the smallest State in Europe may not engage in it with as much security and freedom as the richest shipowner of London or Liverpool.

It is perfectly true that a fighting navy on anything approaching to the scale of that which we at present keep afloat, is superfluous for this purpose; and nothing can be more disastrous than the race which we run with the whole world in building armoured ships. But it is not England alone that is guilty of this monstrous act of international folly. Relatively to the extent of her colonies and of her trade, the English navy is far from being in excess of the navies of Continental States. It is neither the fault nor the merit of England, as a State, that she has the greatest colonial empire in the world, and the greatest mercantile marine at sea. England in her public capacity does nothing for her trade, and less for her colonies than other States. Look, for example, at what France does, and has all along done, for Algeria. These things have grown up from private enterprise,

1 Lindsay's Merchant Shipping, vol. i. pp. 395, 396. Martens, Droit International, pp. 60, 78.

which she was not entitled to repress, and they have imposed on England not only national but cosmopolitan duties of exceptional magnitude, which can be discharged only by an exceptionally powerful navy. The greatest colonial empire and the greatest mercantile marine necessitate the greatest military marine to protect them. The things are inseparable; and England can no more dispense with her navy than she can abandon her colonies and her trade.

But it is on the relative superiority of her military marine alone that the greater extent of her colonies and of her trade compels her to insist; and it appears to me that there is no direction in which relative disarmament might be carried out with so much ease and such obvious advantage as in the navies of the civilised States of Europe and America. Assuming the present relation between the navies of the different States to correspond to their necessities, let that relation be maintained, and the problems which might result from any conceivable combination for warlike purposes would be unaffected by a proportional reduction of the whole of them say by 50 per cent

in tonnage and in guns,

whereas the saving to the To how many

whole world would be incalculably great.

homes of one room "" 1 might a second room be added for the cost of a single ironclad, which the next step in the science of destruction will reduce to the value of old iron? We shall be told, of course, that "the subject is surrounded by difficulties;" but it will scarcely be pretended that it is "surrounded by impossibilities," or even that it is

1 Mr Bright's Rectorial Address at Glasgow, 22d March 1883.

excluded from the range of practical politics;" and unless this can be shown, its importance, surely, entitles it to the most serious consideration of diplomatists and ministers of State. It is a subject, at all events, which I do not hesitate to commend to my colleagues of the Institute as one to which their labours might be more fruitfully devoted than to attempting, whilst they recognise the necessity and consequent jural character of war, to rob it of the most merciful weapon which it wields.

CHAPTER XVII.

OF THE PASSIVE ABNORMAL JURAL RELATIONS.

Of jural submission.

That it is necessity alone which brings the active abnormal relations within the pale of jurisprudence has always been admitted. But that the passive abnormal relations are in the same position in this respect, is by no means generally recognised. War, whether for subjective or objective freedom, can be jurally undertaken only after every other expedient has been exhausted; but war, whether in our own behalf or in behalf of our neighbour, it is said, may always be jurally declined or abandoned. The two propositions, however, are manifestly contradictory; for to say that no man can ever be bound to fight, is equivalent to saying that it can never be necessary that he should fight. The opinion that in abnormal