Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ing upon a State to adopt proper regulations to prevent the spread of epidemics belongs to the so-called natural duties, rather than the more defined and absolute principles of international jurisprudence. But with the increase of international intercourse and the development of a more sensitive national conscience, a demand bas arisen among civilized nations for the recognition of the right to such protection by another State, as well as the long-established one of surrounding itself by defensive barriers. The United States, Great Britain, Germany, and other countries, have provided for inspection of meats and like food exports. In 1879 Sir Shenstone Baker prepared a Code of International Quarantine, which was approved by the United States. Consult Lumley, The Public Health Acts (London, 1902). See QUARANTINE and POLICE POWER.

CONTARINI, kōn'tå-rē’nê. The name of a noble family in Venice, one of the twelve that elected the first Doge. Between 1043 and 1674, seven doges were furnished by this family, and several of its members were men of note. Domenico, Doge in 1043-71, was the first of the family to be invested with that dignity; during his reign the rebuilding of Saint Mark's Church was begun. Andrea, Doge in 1367-82, terminated the long war between Venice and Genoa by defeating the Genoese fleet at Chioggia. His return from this expedition was depicted by Paolo Veronese by order of the Republic. Ambrogio was Ambassador of Venice to Persia in 1473-77 and gave an account of his travels, published in Venice (1487). Gasparo (1483-1542), cardinal and diplomatist, went as Venetian ambassador to the Diet of Worms in 1521, thence accompanied Charles V. to the Netherlands, England, and Spain, and in 1523 concluded the Emperor's alliance with Venice. In 1535 he was made cardinal by Pope Paul III., and as Papal legate to the Diet of Ratisbon, in 1541, made the most extensive concessions to the Protestants, endeavoring to bring about a reconciliation with the Catholic Church. Of his earnest efforts to introduce sweeping reforms in the latter, his Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia (1537) is sufficient proof. The best-known of his other writings is De Magistratibus et Republica Venetorum (1543). Giovanni (1549-1605) was a painter of the Venetian School, who formed himself chiefly after the works of Titian and Palma the Younger. Called to Vienna by Emperor Rudolph II., he painted many portraits, but he is more noted for his historical compositions, among which are "The Doge Marino Grimani Adoring the Virgin," "Conquest of Verona by the Venetians," both executed for the Doge's Palace in Venice; and "Baptism of Christ."

and was appointed by Napoleon chief of the aërostatic corps of the French army of invasion in the Egyptian expedition. During that expedition his inventive genius proved to be of great service; for, after the reverse at Aboukir, the revolt at Cairo, and the consequent loss of instruments and supplies, he directed the manufacture of cloth, surgical instruments, bread, arms, ammunition, and other necessaries. He also devised (1798) a barometer, similar to the later one of Vidi. In 1802 he assisted in founding the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry. Consult Jomard, Conté, sa vie et ses travaux (Paris, 1852).

CONTEMPORANETTY (from Lat. contemporaneus, simultaneous, from com-, together tempus, time). A term used in geology to imply that two formations were deposited during the same period of time. This does not necessarily mean that they must contain the same fossil species, nor is it likely that they will, except when the two areas of deposition are in the same basin. The term contemporaneity is sometimes confused with homotary, which means that certain formations occupy the same relative positions with respect to the development of life forms. Thus, certain formations of the Devonian in Europe and North America might show similar faunas, but not have been deposited at exactly the same time. They would be homotaxial. See GEOLOGY.

CONTEMPT (Lat. contemptus, from contem nere, to despise, from com-, together + temnere, to despise). In law, any disobedience of, or disrespectful or disorderly conduct in the presence of, any court or legislative body. It is punishable because it tends to impair the dignity, power, and authority of such bodies, and thus interfere with the administration of the law, and generally the body concerned has an inherent power summarily to impose upon the offender a penalty of fine or imprisonment, or both. All courts have such power. The guilty person may usually have these penalties remitted by 'purging' the contempt; that is, by making pecuniary reparation, as far as possible, for any damage caused by his acts, and apologizing for his fault. If satisfactory, an order or minute is then entered reciting that this has been done and directing that the culprit be relieved from the penalty. Consult: Rapalje, Treatise on Contempt (New York, 1884); Oswald, Contempt of Court, Committal, and Attachment, and Arrest Upon Civil Process (London, 1895).

CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT. See PAR

LIAMENT.

CONTES À NINON, kônt zả nê'nôN' (Fr., CONTARINI FLEM'ING. A romance by Ninon stories). A collection of short stories Benjamin Disraeli (1832).

[ocr errors]

CONTÉ, kôn'tâ', NICOLAS JACQUES (17551805). A French chemist and inventor, born at Aunou sur Orne (Orne). He was at first a painter, but afterwards turned to the mechanical arts, and, when France was deprived, through war with England, of its plumbago supply, in vented a substitute in the shape of a mixture of graphite and clay. This substance he utilized for the manufacture of black-lead pencils, known as crayons Conté, by a process since followed in making all pencils. He also made extensive researches concerning the military aërostat, became director of the aërostatic school at Meudon,

by Emile Zola, which were collected and published in 1864, when their author was only twen ty-four years old. It was his first important work, and has been deemed by some critics his best book of short stories, being free from the exaggerations and brutalities which marked many of his later writings. In 1874 he published Nouveaux contes à Ninon.

CONTES DE MA MÈRE L'OYE, kônt de må mâr lwä (Fr., stories of my Mother Goose). A famous collection of fairy tales by Charles Perrault (1697), purporting to be written by his ten-year-old son. The stories are taken from popular tradition, and are told in simple, child

[blocks in formation]

CONTES DRÔLATIQUES, drô'lå'têk' (Fr., droll stories). A series of thirty tales by Balzac, abounding in Rabelaisian humor, and copying the style and spelling of the sixteenth century. They were published variously in 1832, ,1833, and 1837.

CONTES DU LUNDI, du lex'de (Fr., Monday stories). A collection of short stories by Alphonse Daudet (1873), of which La dernière classe, the touching story of the last school session held by an old French schoolmaster in Alsace before the German occupation,

attracted much attention.

CONTI, Kôn'te', HOUSE OF. A younger branch of the House of Bourbon-Condé (see CONDE). It first appears in French history in the sixteenth century when François, son of Louis de Bourbon, first Prince of Condé, took the name of Marquis de Conti from his mother's fief of Conti-sur-Selles, in Picardy. Toward the end of the century he was made Prince of Conti. He died without heirs in 1614, and for sixteen years the title was in abeyance. In 1630 it was bestowed upon the infant Armand de Bourbon, second son of the Prince of Condé. This second

Prince de Conti is generally regarded as the founder of the house. His son, Louis Armand, Prince de Conti, succeeded him, and on his death,

in 1685, left the title to his younger brother, François Louis (1664-1709), who styled himself Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon et de Conti, and was

the most noted member of the family. He had been educated under the eyes of the great Condé and embraced a military career with enthusiam. He served in Hungary against the Turks, but, owing to incautious letters which he wrote home, he lost the favor of Louis XIV., and on returning was banished to Chantilly. Pardoned through the intercession of the great Condé, the Prince served with distinction under the Duke of Luxembourg, and was present at the battles of Steenkerk (1692) and Neerwinden (1693). In 1697 he was put forward by Louis XIV. as a candidate for the Polish crown, and was in fact elected King by a part of the nobles, but found himself powerless against the opposition of Russia, the Emperor Leopold I., and the Pope, and abandoned his claim. Louis XIV. was never his friend, and feared Conti's popularity, so that the Prince spent his later life in retirement. In 1709, however, he was summoned to take command of the Army of Flanders, but was carried off by an attack of the gout, February 22, 1709. Massillon pronounced his funeral oration, and Saint-Simon, in his memoirs, speaks of him in glowing terms. His son was a worthless roué of the time of the Regency; but his grandson, Louis Francois (1717-76), Prince de Conti, distinguished himself as a brave and popular commander. The last member of the house was Louis François Joseph (1734-1814), Prince de Conti, son of the preceding, who, after a somewhat checkered career, died at Barcelona. Consult: Martin, Histoire de France, vols. ix., x.,

xi. (Boston, 1864-66); Mémoires of FontenayMareuil, La Rochefoucauld-Doudainville (Paris, 1861-64), and Saint-Simon (London, 1889); Topin, L'Europe et les Bourbons (Paris, 1868); Mémoires of Noailles (Paris, 1777); D'Argenson, Mémoires (London, 1893); and Bernis, Mémoires (Paris, 1878); De Broglie, Le secret du roi (Paris, 1879).

CONTI, AUGUSTO (1822-). An Italian philnear San Miniato in osophical writer, born He studied law at several Italian Tuscany. universities and practiced in Florence until 1848, when he enlisted as a volunteer for service and taught philosophy in San Miniato; in 1855 against Austria. Subsequently he practiced law was made professor of philosophy in Lucca; in Pisa, and in 1864 professor of mental and moral 1863 professor of the history of philosophy in include: Evidenza, amore e fede, o i criteri della philosophy in Florence. His published works filosofia (1862, and subsequent editions); Storia della filosofia (1864, and subsequent editions); L'armonia delle cose (2 vols., 1878); Filosofia clementare (1869; ed. 9, 1879); Dio come ordinatore del mondo (1871); and Il vero nell' ordine (1876; 2d ed., 1891). In these and other works, Conti makes an earnest attempt to bring into agreement the teachings of different philosophical schools.

CONTI, NICCOLÒ DEL. An Italian traveler of the fifteenth century. He learned Oriental languages and carried on an extensive traffic in the East. He traveled in Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and India, and later gave a complete account of his travels to Poggio Bracciolini, secretary of Pope Eugenius IV. Poggio's manuscript relating the observations and adventures of Conti was first published in 1723, under the title Historia de Varietate Fortune. Conti was one of the pioneers of European commerce in the East, and one of the first to advocate the idea of finding a western way by sea to the Eastern countries. Consult Giardina, I viaggi di Niccolò de' Conti (Catania, 1898).

CONTINENT (ML. continens, from Lat. continere, to touch, from com-, together + tenere, to hold). The largest natural land division; of greater area than an island or peninsula. The outer portion of the earth is composed of two layers, the solid rocky crust, or lithosphere,' and the water areas, or hydrosphere.' In the early period of its history the earth may have been surrounded entirely by the hydrosphere, but at present, and, so far as known, in all geological ages, the crust has been folded into mountain chains, forming nuclei around which the continental land areas are grouped, while the waters have accumulated in the intermediate depressions. Geographers usually recognize as continents Eurasia (comprising Europe and Asia), Africa, Australia, North America, and South America; the two Americas, however, are sometimes grouped as a single continent, although such a classification is hardly justifiable unless Africa be included with the Eurasian continent. A sixth continent may be represented by the land areas in the Antarctic region (q.v.). It is estimated that the land constitutes about 55,000,000 square miles, or 28 per cent. of the entire surface of the earth. The continents vary widely in form, area, relief, and distribution on the globe, yet they may have many features

in common. Usually the regions of greatest elevation are found in the interior, while along the coast line there is a gentle slope outward which, continued beneath the sea, forms a slightly submerged land strip called the 'continental shelf.' On the seaward edge of the shelf the slope is very rapid down to the great depths of the sea. The average altitude of the continents, according to the calculations of Lapparent, Murray, Penck, Supan, and Heiderich, is shown below:

ESTIMATED AVERAGE ELEVATIONS OF THE CONTINENTS

[blocks in formation]

Between the form and distribution of the continents many interesting comparisons may be drawn. The two Americas, comprising the greater part of the land area in the New World, are triangular in shape, the apex of the one lying in the Isthmus of Panama and the apex of the other being represented by Cape Horn. Both continents are bounded on the west by a long mountain system and both have a region of lower elevation in the eastern portion. The Old World, on the other hand, is composed of a single triangular land area which has its base on the Arctic Sea and its apex at the Cape of Good Hope. Here the main trend of the mountain chains is east and west. In general, the continents that extend into or lie within the Southern Hemisphere-South America, Africa, and Australia-are most regular, contrasting strongly in this particular with North America and Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere. The

northern continents have a wider extension from east to west than the southern, and are further characterized by a great group of islands lying along the southeastern coast.

That the great land areas are not stable either as to form or elevation may be regarded as established beyond doubt by geological evidence. Moreover, certain coastal regions are known at the present time to be undergoing changes of level by which land emerges above or sinks below the sea. The extent of these oscillations in past ages can only be conjectured. Lyell's theory that there has been a constant interchange between the land and water areas has been objected to on the ground that there is no evidence that the abysmal depths of the ocean have ever been elevated; this objection has been weakened, however, by the discovery within continental areas of deposits abysmal in character and containing a deep-sea fauna. The changes of level between the land and the sea take place very slowly, and may be caused either by gradual vertical movement of the land area or by variations in the level of the ocean itself. Geologists generally agree that the positions of the present continents were determined as far back Archæan times. The Laurentian plateau of North America, the Brazilian highlands of South America, and the Scandinavian peninsula and Lap

as

land in Europe are composed of crystalline rocks, and except on the margins they are bare of all sediments. These primitive lands were extended in area by the deposition of sedimentary strata on their borders, and by great upheavals accompanied by foldings of the crust into mountain ranges.

The evolution of the continental lands can be studied only tentatively, and is largely conjectured from the evidence afforded by the characters of the fauna and flora that lived in past ages. During the Cretaceous and Tertiary times the animal and plant life of South America, South Africa, and India were strikingly similar, while there was also a uniformity between the life-forms of Europe and North America. This circumstance can best be explained by the assumption that in these periods the continents had an east and west trend, so that Brazil, Central Africa, and Lower India were united by one broad land-strip, and eastern Canada with Europe by another. Between the northern and southern continents an ocean basin extended from the isthmus of Central America eastward to the Indian Ocean, or nearly at right angles to the basin now occupied by the Atlantic. The changes by which the continents assumed their present form took place gradually and were accomplished by a slow depression of portions of the land and by encroachment of the sea. is probable that certain regions for a long time remained above sea-level as large islands, the unsubmerged remnants of which still exist, for example, in the Cape Verde and Canary islands, in the British Isles, and in Madagascar. These changes were doubtless completed before the appearance of mankind; at least within historical times, so far as is known, there has been no marked alteration in the form of the continents.

It

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde (Leipzig, 1885-1900); Neumayr, Erdgeschichte (Leipzig, 1895); Mill, The Realm of Nature (New York, 1895); Mill, The International Geography (New York, 1900). See GEOLOGY; GEOGRAPHY; AMERICA; EUROPE; ASIA; AFRICA; AUSTRALIA.

CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. See UNITED

STATES.

CONTINENTAL SYSTEM. The name given to the commercial policy adopted by Napoleon for the purpose of shutting England out from all connection with the Continent of Europe, and thus compelling her to acknowledge the maritime law as established at the Peace of Utrecht. This system began with Napoleon's famous Berin Decree of November 21, 1806, which declared the British Isles in a state of blockade and prohibited all commerce or correspondence with them; every Englishman found in a country oecupied by French troops or by their allies was declared a prisoner of war; all merchandise belonging to an Englishman was made lawful prize; and all trade in English goods was entirely prohibited. No ship coming directly from England, or from a British colony, was allowed to enter any port; and any ship seeking by false declarations to evade this regulation was confiscated with its cargo as if British property. England was not long in making reprisals. By an Order in Council. January 7, 1807, all neutral vessels were prohibited from trading from port to port within France or any country in alliance with it or under its control. Every neutral ves

sel violating this order was to be confiscated with its cargo. Napoleon responded by a decree dated Warsaw, January 25, 1807, which ordered the confiscation of all English or English colonial merchandise found in the German Hanse towns. By a second Order in Council, November 11, 1807, all harbors and places in France and her allies in Europe and the colonies, as well as in every country with which England was not at war, but from which the English flag was excluded, were placed under the same restrictions as if strictly blockaded. These orders were followed by reprisals on the French side. By the Milan decree of December 17, 1807, strengthened by a second, of January 11, 1808, issued from the Tuileries, any vessel, of whatever nation, that had been searched by an English ship, or had submitted to be sent on a voyage to England, or paid any duty to the English Government, was to be declared denationalized, and treated as English. By the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) Russia consented to close her ports to English commerce, and in o ler the more effectually to annihilate such commerce, there appeared, August 3, 1810, the tariff of Trianon for colonial goods; this was extended by a decree of September 2; on October 18 followed the decree of Fontainebleau, ordering the burning of all English goods, an order which was to be carried out with more or less modification in all countries connected with France.

The consequence of the Continental System was undoubtedly the springing up upon the Continent of many branches of manufacture to the loss of England; on the other hand, the price of foreign goods rose to an extraordinary height, enabling a few merchants to make fortunes, but sensibly affecting the daily comfort of the middle classes. On the whole, the Continental System, both politically and economically, was a mistake. Russia abandoned it in 1810, and with the breaking up of Napoleon's power the system collapsed entirely. On the English side the enforcement of the Orders in Council gave offense to the United States, and was one of the principal causes of the War of 1812. Consult: Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire (Boston, 1894); Thiers, Histoire du consulat et de l'empire (Paris, 1845-62); Cime, Etude sur les tarifs de douane et les traités de commerce (Paris, 1875); Henry Adams, History of the United States (New York, 1889-91). See NEUTRALS; NAPOLEON I.

CONTINGENT (from Lat. contingere, to touch). A quota of troops, furnished to the common army by another branch of the service, or by different coöperating nations or armies. It was the naval contingent that saved the day in the defense of Ladysmith against the Boers in 1899. The various contingents of the international armies formed the common army under the leadership of Count Waldersee, the German commander, in the China campaign of 1900. The troops to be furnished by each of the United States under a call for volunteers by the President is its quota.

CONTINGENT REMAINDER. See RE

MAINDER.

CONTINUED FRACTION. See FRACTION. CONTINUITY (Lat. continuitas, from continuus, uninterrupted, from continere, to hold

VOL. V.-23.

together, from com-, together + tenere, to hold). In geometry, a vital principle which asserts that if from the nature of a particular problem we would expect a certain number of solutions, then there will be the same number of solutions in every case, although some may be imaginary. E.g. a straight line and a circle in the same plane intersect in two points real, coincident or imaginary. The sum of the angles of a quadrilateral is a perigon whether the quadilateral is convex, cross, or concave. In this case, however, angles which have decreased and have passed through zero must be regarded as negative. By the principle of continuity theorems concerning real points or lines may be extended to imaginary points or lines. This change can take place only when some element of the figure passes through either a zero value or an infinite value; eg. rotate an asymptote of the hyperbola about the origin; before rotation it cuts the curve in two infinite points; after rotation it cuts it in two real points or two imaginary points. In case of the real points rotate it still further, and these pass to infinity, and imaginary points occur. Many propositions of elementary geometry may be inferred from this principle. It was first stated by Kepler, emphasized by Boscovich, and put into acceptable form by Poncelet in his Traité des propriétés projectives des figures (2d ed., Paris, 1865-66).

More generally continuity is a philosophical concept exemplified in space and time. It has been defined as a series of adjacent parts with common limits; as, infinite divisibility; that is, that however small the segment between two points, a further division is possible; but in modern analysis continuity is the essential property of a continuum. By a continuum is understood a system or manifoldness of parts possessed in varying degree of a property A, such that between any two parts distant a finite length from each other an infinite number of other parts may be interpolated, of which those that are immediately adjacent exhibit only indefinitely small differences with respect to the property A. This is expressed by Cantor as a 'perfekt zusammenhängende Menge,' a perfect concatenation of points; e.g. all numbers rational and irrational in any interval form a continuum. A concatenation not perfect is called a semi-continuum; e.g. the rational or the irrational numbers in any interval. A straight line is said to possess continuity.

By the continuity of the roots of an equation is meant that as a result of certain variations

of the function, different pairs of roots may during the process become equal or imaginary, the total number always continuing the samean example given by Leibnitz. By the continuity of a function of x is meant the fact that indefinitely small and continuous changes in the value of between certain limits produce indefinitely small and continuous changes in the function. Consult: Jordan, Cours d'analyse (Paris, 1893); Poncelet, Traité des propriétés projectives des figures (Paris, 1865-66); Encyclopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften, vol. i. (Leipzig, 1901); Cantor, Mathematische Annalen, vols. xx. and xxi. (Leipzig, 1882-83); Mach, in The Open Court, vol. xiv. (Chicago, 1900).

CONTINUITY, LAW OF. A principle first formulated by Leibnitz (q.v.), which is expressed

in the Latin sentence, Natura non facit saltum in red or black on the map, drawn round the hill ("Nature does not make sudden leaps"). It at exactly the same level. Height is also shown is opposed to the principle of discreteness, which by contours; on a map the distance between conasserts that all differences are hard and fixed, tours, commonly called the vertical interval, is and that differences of kind are not differences of always a fixed number of feet. The value of degree. Of late the significance of the law of contours in a map or sketch to the engineer or continuity is coming more and more to be recog- military officer is that he is enabled to tell at a nized. Indeed, it is the fundamental presupposi- glance the slope of the ground to be traversed, tion of all evolutionary thought, which maintains and also whether the hills are gentle or steep, that all the differences of organic species and as the nearer together two contours appear on a genera are differences appearing here and there in map the steeper is the slope, and vice versa. a continuum of variation, and that they get See SURVEYING; and ENGINEERING, MILITARY. their discrete character from the disappearance See article MAP, where contour lines are shown of intergradient forms. The law of continuity on the topographical map there given. may be illustrated in many ways. The solar spectrum, for instance, presents us with a series of colors which blend into each other in such a way that it is impossible to say where one color ends and another begins. Within this series we see many recognizably distinct colors; but this really means that red and blue are so different

that a normal eye cannot confuse them. It does not mean that they are so different that no conceivable difference in degree can account for the difference in kind. In fact, it takes only a glance at the spectrum to see that the difference in kind is mediated by differences in degree, and that these latter are not abrupt and intermittent, but continuous and unbroken. By abstracting from the intervening colors and shades we can represent any detectable differences to ourselves as discrete, but this appearance of discreteness comes from failure to attend to the mediating shades. It is, however, to be observed that the continuity of the difference does not in the least prejudice the fact of difference. This truth can be stated in the following paradox: The colors and shades that separate two given colors in a spectrum also unite them. Generalizing this, we get the law that all intervenients while uniting separate, and while separating unite, the extremes between which they lie. See IDENTITY; and for the continuity of the states of aggregation of chemical substances, CRITICAL POINT.

Inter

CONTRABAND OF WAR (It. contrabbando, Sp., Port. contrabando, from ML. contrabannum, contraband, from contra, against + bandum, bannum, proclamation, from OHG. ban, Ger. Bann, AS. bann, Engl. ban; ultimately connected with Lat. fari, Cik. pĥvai, phēnai, to speak). Goods of such character as to be liable to seizure by a belligerent in trade between a neutral and the enemy in time of war. national complications arise over the definition of what, in a particular instance, constitutes contraband. To some extent this has been defined by treaty, especially by the United States, but the changes in methods of modern warfare render the list a constantly shifting one. Great Britain has adopted the classification of (a) goods absolutely contraband, and (b) goods occasionally contraband; i.e. making the decision depend upon the condition of being intended for warlike use. Under the latter head are included provisions, coal, horses, fittings for steam vessels, etc. Thus, in the case of a Swedish ship in the War of 1812 bound for the neutral port of Bilbao with a cargo of grain intended for the use of the British fleet lying there, the cargo was subject to confiscation as contraband. So coal came up for discussion in the Crimean War, Great Britain claiming it to be included under the head of occasional contraband. France in the war of 1859 refused to

CONTINUOUS SERVICE. See ENLIST- treat coal as contraband. The United States

MENT.

CONTOR'NIATE (It. contorniato, from contorno, contour, from ML. contornare, to go around, from Lat. com-, together + tornare, to turn, from tornus, Gk. Tópvos, tornos, lathe). A term applied to a class of antique medals which have a deep line cut round the edge, like a furrow, and are also marked by a strongly projecting edge. They show on one side a head, often of an emperor or other ruler, sometimes Homer, Sallust, Horace, or other authors, and on the other a scene from the circus or amphitheatre or from mythology or, rarely, daily life. No contorniate is known to be certainly earlier than the third century A.D., and most of them are even later. Many explanations of the use of contorniates have been given; the most probable is that they were counters in games, the reliefs on the sides being protected from contact with the board by the projecting rim.

CONTORTED STRATA. See GEOLOGY.
CONTOURS' (Fr., from ML. contornare, to

go around). In topographical surveying and
military sketching, the intersection of a hill by
a horizontal plane. On topographical maps and
military sketches hills are shown by contours,
which are imaginary lines, generally represented

at the time of the Civil War adopted the English position, as did Germany in the war of 1870, and Russia in the war with Japan. Such differences threaten to furnish serious controversy in the event of war between any of the great commercial nations. The rules of international law provide that subjects of neutrals may carry contraband to either belligerent, but must do so at their own risk. So neutral merchants may trade in arms, ammunition, and stores in time of war as in time of peace, but either belligerent may capture such goods as are of direct and immediate use in war, if they can intercept them in their passage to the enemy while not within neutral jurisdiction. While a neutral is bound to prevent the departure of armed expeditions from its shores and the supplying of fighting gear to belligerent vessels in its ports, no duty is imposed of restraining contraband trade, though it has no right to interfere in behalf of subjects whose property is seized by one belligerent on the way to another, provided it belongs to the class of forbidden commodities.

Three requisites are necessary to constitute the offense of carrying contraband: (1) Sale and transport of contraband goods within a neutral territory is permissible, but they may not be sent across the frontier to a belligerent

« AnteriorContinuar »