of the impossibility of maintaining it on the mere want of right in the neutral, when they proceed to contend, that the trade which they wish to restrain is in substance an interference in the war, and a breach of the duties of neutrality. If this be the case, it ought no doubt to be interdicted upon that footing; but it ought to be clearly understood, at the same time, that this is the ground on which it is objected to; and that all that is wanting for its justification, is to shew that it does not assist the one belligerent, nor distress the other, in such a way as is inconsistent with the strict duties of neutrality.

Now, upon this head, we are inclined to hold, that the assistance or obstruction to which this description applies, must bear a direct reference to the hostile efforts of the two bellige rents, and that the neutral character will not be violated merely by carrying on trade with one of them, in such a way as to give him a share of its commercial advantages, while the other is obstructed in nothing but its general desire to impoverish the traders of the enemy. To relieve a place which is blockaded, is a direct interference with a specific act of hostility, and tends to defeat a scheme of annoyance which is then in the course of execution. It is therefore interdicted by the law of nations, as an evident transgression of the duties of neutrality. To carry arms or warlike stores, in like manner, to a nation whose means of attack or defence must depend in a great measure on the possession of such articles, has a direct and immediate effect to alter the fortune of the war, and is nearly as palpable an interference in it, as to give or to lend to one party a supply of soldiers or sailors. All traffic with a belligerent, in such articles, has accordingly been prohi bited; and the right of seizing contraband of war, been recognized from time immemorial. But it has, for as long, been thought lawful for a neutral to trade freely with a belligerent in every other article, and to buy and sell with him upon terms of mutual profit and advantage; nor has it ever been pretended that this trade was illegal, merely because it was a source of emolument to the belligerent as well as to the neutral, and in this way interfered eventually with his enemy's lawful endeavours to bring him to a submission, by cutting off all his resources and incans of revenue. In this point of view, however, it is evident that there is no room for distinguishing between the colonial trade of a belligerent and any other trade which may be carried on between him and a neutral. The belligerent has a profit by both, and is thus enabled to carry on the war with undiminished resources, while the enemy's views of impoverishment are obstructed by means of the neutral. It can make no difference to either party, whether the neutral buys wine in the ports of the mother country,

country, or rum in those of her colonies. The assistance which he gives to one belligerent, and the consequent obstruction he occasions to the views of the other, are the same in both cases; and if the one trade be undoubtedly lawful, it will not be easy to shew that the other is not,

These are the general principles upon which we are inclined to go to issue with the author of this publication. The reasons upon which they are founded will be better understood when we have considered more particularly the grounds upon which he has rested his opposite conclusions.

Though the pamphlet is certainly written with great ability, and the author is abundantly perspicuous in most of his particular statements, we will confess that we have been at some loss to discover the precise ground upon which he is disposed to justify the rule of the war 1756. He quotes with vehement approbation a passage, which we have already given entire, from a judgment of Sir W. Scott, in which, if we do not mistake, the trade in question is condemned, chiefly as being in the nature of a direct interference with our lawful hostilities against the enemies' colonies; but while he affects to coincide with the learned judge in this view of the question, it is evident, we think, that our author has himself laid but little stress on that consideration, and rather seems inclined to infer the illegality of the trade from the circumstances of its being beneficial to the enemy, and not having been open to the neutral in time of peace. These considerations, we conceive to be quite separate in their own nature, and to require therefore a distinct investigation.

The principle laid down by Sir W. Scott, in the passage already quoted, seems shortly to be this ;-The colonies of an enemy are natural objects of hostility, and may with certainty be reduced and captured, if supplies can be cut off from them: If a belligerent, therefore, chooses to apply his means to this object, no neutral has a right to step in and prevent its execution. Now this, it is evident, is resting the argument upon the supposition of an actual interference with a scheme of direct hostility ;-the plea is, that the neutral has no right to obstruct a belligerent actually employed in the reduction of his enemies' colonies. The principle cannot be disputed; but, with all submission to the learned person referred to, it does not appear to apply to the fact of the

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case.

*

We

* We hope it is unneceffary for us to say, that in fpite of the liberty we have here taken with the reafonings imputed to him, we entertain, in common with all who have ever looked into the record of his decifions, the moft unfeigned veneration and refpect for the penetrating fagacity, profound judgment, and unblemished integrity of Sir William

Scott.

enemy :-we have

We are not now engaged in reducing the colonies of the we have not chofen to apply our means to that object : no thoughts of taking from the enemy the islands of Cuba and St Domingo, or the vast continent of South America :-we have never proposed to poffefs ourselves of those places, nor pretended to blockade or inveft the other colonies of our enemies. Our complaint is not, that these colonies are withheld from us in confequence of affiftance illegally rendered by neutrals to places in a ftate of fiege; we complain merely, that their produce is withdrawn from our capture, by being fold to neutrals on the spot: and whatever may be the validity of this complaint, it seems to be certain, that the reafons faid to have been affigned in the Court of Admiralty, are wholly and entirely inapplicable to the admitted circumftances of the cafe. This feems alfo to be the opinion of the author before us; for, though he pronounces a warm eulogium on the doctrine which he quotes from the reports, he has certainly made no attempt to enforce or fupport it, and rests his own reafonings upon a foundation altogether independent. The only paffage in which he appears to borrow any thing from the argument of Sir W. Scott, is, where he talks of the colonial trade being fet up within the lifts of war,' and subject to hoftility of course, by whatever hands it may be carried on, These are metaphorical expreffions which feem to have no precife meaning. For our own part, at least, we do not understand how any poffeffion of the enemy can be fo fet within the lifts of war, except by the known and established course of blockade ;-that it is liable to be attacked,

Scott. Bound, as he seems to have conceived himself, by the terms of the Royal instructions as the rule of his judgment, it was natural for him to seek to juftify to his own mind the principle of those inftructions; and if they were not capable of being juftified, it is not wonderful that he should have been mifled. It is to be observed, alfo, that there is reafon for fufpecting that our long habit of maritime, fuperiority has produced in this country a very general infenfibility to the rights of thofe to whofe fituation it never occurs to us that we may be reduced. The fecure poffeffion of power gives a prodigious bias to our moral judgments in every queftion which relates to its exercife. We eafily fatisfy ourselves that we have a right to do all that we have the defire, the power, and the habit of doing; and can rarely bring ourselves to take a fair view of thofe claims which we know cannot be enforced against us. There are innumerable inftances of this dangerous illufion. It was with the utmoft difficulty, that even the moft liberal and enlightened of the old Nobleffe could be made to feel and understand the rights and claims of their inferiors; and in our own country, to take a narrower inftance, it is aftonishing how hard it is to convince the common people that there is any fin in plundering a wreck that is thrown unprotected into their hands.

attacked, certainly affords no reason for declaring it unlawful for neutrals to interfere with it.

The author's own reasonings, however, depend upon a different principle. The enemy is benefited by this trade of neutrals with his colonies; and it is a trade to which the neutral had no access in time of peace. These two circumstances taken together, are sufficient, he seems to think, to entitle us to repress this trade as illegal. We have an interest to do so, because we shall thus harass and annoy our enemy; and we are not barred from pursuing this interest; because the neutral, after he is interdicted from this trade, will be no worse than he was in time of peace. The interest we have already admitted ;-the right, we think extremely questionable. In point of fact, we deny that the neutral, if interdicted from this trade in time of war, would be in as good a situation as in time of peace; a, in point of principle, we contend that, even if it were otherwise, the nature of the benefit to be gained by us from enforcing this rule, is not such as to entitle us to prevent the neutral from improving his condition by rejecting it.

It is perfectly plain, at first sight, that the condition of the neutral, who is prevented from trading to the colonies of a belligerent during war, is incomparably worse than his situation while excluded from that trade during peace. In peace, the colonial proprietor brought his produce to the neutral in his own bottoms, and supplied him with as much of it as he chose to buy, either for his own consumption, or for exportation. In war, at least in the wars which give occasion to this question, the colonial proprietor cannot send a ship to sea; and the neutral must either go for the produce which he has occasion for, or be entirely deprived of the commodity. It is needless to enlarge on a consideration so obvious and important. The products of an enemy's colony may sometimes be such as to be indispensable to the comfort, or even to the existence of some other nation. If the proprietors are prevented by war from exporting them according to their usual colonial regulations, will it be said that the neutral shall be altogether deprived of his necessary supply, because, truly, he cannot now obtain it, without engaging, himself, in a trade which was not open to him in time of peace? It is mere quibbling and mockery to say, that, by such a prohibition, he is not put in a worse situation than before; and it would evidently be the height of injustice to subject him to this grievous disadvantage, merely that the weaker belligerent might be a little more distressed in his general commercial speculations. The difference between being excluded by the owner of the colony in time of peace, and by his enemy in time of war, is, that, in the former case, the neutral gets the produce as plentifully

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tifully and cheaply as if he were not excluded; and that, in the latter, he cannot get it at all. If he is entitled, therefore, to be put really and substantially on the same footing as to his trade (that is, his buying and selling) to those colonies as before the war, it is evident that he must now be allowed to go to those that cannot come to him, and to carry on, in the ports of the colony, that ancient and accustomed trade which was formerly transacted on the shores of his own country.

It has probably been from some feeling of the obvious and essential equity of such an allowance, that, except in the single case of 1756, we have never pretended to interdict the direct trade of a neutral between the colony of an enemy and his own mother country. This exception, though founded upon such obvious equity, our author is pleased to consider as a voluntary and imprudent indulgence; and our readers will recollect, that it is the sole object of his work to persuade Government to recal it, and to return to the unqualified prohibition of all neutral intercourse with our enemies' colonies. The exception, we have seen, rests upon the fair rights of neutrality, and upon those views of obvious and indisputable equity which are the foundation of the law of nations. It is totally inconsistent, at the same time, with the general principle advanced by us in the war 1756, and is therefore decisive of the general question as to the equity of that principle. Even with regard to the carrying trade between hostile colonies and the other parts of the world, it does not appear to us that the neutral is fairly dealt with, if he is entirely excluded from it in time of war, by the arms of the opposite belligerent. In peace, he was enabled to buy the colonial produce in his own ports for exportation, as well as for manufacture or home consumption; and it must frequently have happened, that the greater part was purchased with the former destination. If, in time of war, he is not allowed to export this same produce, as usual, from the place of purchase, he is plainly in a much worse situation than in time of peace.

Let it be supposed, however, that the trade about which he is disputing is in a great measure a new trade, and that he is confessedly endeavouring to take advantage of the war to enlarge and extend his commercial speculations much farther than he could expect to have done in time of peace, the question still remains, whether this be an illegal attempt, or whether the interest we have in opposing it be of a nature to justify our forcible interference. It will not be denied, that it is in general sufficiently laudable for a nation to aim at extending its trade; and if the existence of war affords certain facilities in this respect to those which remain neutral, it cannot be illegal in them to avail themselves of them; nor çan the belligerents interfere to prevent them, except they can

shew