coasting trade, there is not a single merchant ship that enters or clears out of the enemies' ports but under neutral colours; all their immense traffic is carried on in the name of Danes, Prussians, and Americans; and, except in a few rare cases, where the neglect or unskilfulness of the agents has exposed the fallacy to which they are indebted for protection, this hostile trade is carried on with less risk of capture, and, consequently, at a lower rate of insurance, than that which sails under the imperial flag of England. This statement is justified by a long investigation and enumeration of particulars, from which the author seems warranted in concluding, that the produce of the enemies' colonies is at this moment brought to Europe more securely, and sold there for a lower price, than that of our own settlements. In all this disquisition, the author has taken it for granted, that a very large proportion of the produce so transported is really and truly the property of the enemy; and that the appearance of a neutral owner in the ship papers, is entirely a fraudulent and fallacious contrivance. In comparing the enormous extent of this factitious neutral trade in the present war, with what it ever was on former occasions, the author makes the following striking observations. Those who are but fuperficially acquainted with the subject, may perhaps be ready to fuppofe, that the frauds which they hear imputed to neutral merchants at this period, are like thofe which have always prevailed in every maritime war; but the present cafe, in its extent and groffness at least, is quite without a precedent. 'Formerly, indeed, neutrals have carried much of the property of our enemies; and great part of what they carried was always oftenfibly their own; but now, they carry the whole of his exports and imports, and allege the whole to be neutral. It rarely, if ever, happens, that the property of a single bale of goods is admitted by the papers to be hoftile property. We are at war with all those who, next to ourselves, are the ́ chief commercial nations of the old world; and yet the ocean does not fuftain a fingle keel, fhips of war excepted, in which we can find any merchandize that is allowed to be legitimate prize. France, Spain, Holland, Genoa, and the late Auftrian Netherlands, and all the colonies and tranfmarine dominions of those powers, do not, collectively, at this hour, poffefs a fingle merchant fhip, or a merchant, engaged on his own account in exterior commerce; or else the neutral flag is now proftituted, to a degree very far beyond all former example. Those who difpute the latter conclufion, must ask us to believe, that all the once entinent mercantile houses of the great maritime countries now hoftile to England, are become mere factors, who buy and fell on commiffion, for the mighty, though new-born merchants of Denmark, Pruffia, and America; for in all the numberless ports and territories of our enemies, there is not one man who now openly fuftains the charac A 3 ter ter of a foreign independent trader, even by a fingle adventure. Not a pipe of brandy is cleared outwards, nor a hogfhead of fugar entered inwards, in which any fubject of those unfortunate realms has an intereft beyond his commiflion. If the extravagance of this general result, did not fufficiently fhew the falfehood, in a general view, of the items of pretence which compofe it, I might further fatisfy, and perhaps aftonish the reader, by adducing particular examples of the grofs fictions by which the claims of neutral property are commonly fuftained in the prize court. Merchants who, immediately prior to the laft war, were fcarcely known, even in the obfcure fea-port towns at which they refided, have fuddenly started up as fole owners of great numbers of fhips, and fole proprietors of rich cargoes, which it would have alarmed the wealthieft merchants of Europe, to hazard at once on the chance of a market, even in peaceable times. A man who, at the breaking out of the war, was a petty fhoemaker, in a small town of East Friesland, had, at one time, a hundred and fifty veffels, navigating as his property under Pruffian colours. It has been quite a common case, to find individuals, who confeffedly had but recently commenced bufinefs as merchants, and whofe com, mercial establishments on fhore were fo infignificant, that they fometimes had not a fingle clerk in their employment, the claimants of numerous cargoes, each worth many thousand pounds; and all deftined, at the fame time, with the fame fpecies of goods, to the fame precarious markets. • The cargoes of no less than five East Indiamen, all compofed of the rich exports of Batavia, together with three of the fhips, were cotemporary purchases, on fpeculation, of a fingle houfe at Providence in Rhode Island, and were all bound, as afferted, to that American port; where, it is fcarcely neceffary to add, no demand for their cargoes exifted. • Adventures not lefs gigantic, were the fubjects of voyages from the colonies of Dutch Guiana, to the neutral ports of Europe; and from the Spanish West Indies, to North America, Veffels were fent out from the parfimonious northern ports of the latter country, and brought back, in abundance, the dollars and gold ingots of Vera Cruz and La Plata. Single ships have been found returning with bullion on board, to the value of from a hundred, to a hundred and fifty thousand Spanish dollars, befides valuable cargoes of other colonial exports. • Yet even thefe daring adventurers have been eclipfed. One neutral houfe has boldly contracted for all the merchandize of the Dutch East India Company at Batavia; amounting in value to no less than one million feven hundred thousand pounds fterling. • But have not, it may be asked, the means of payment, for all the rich cargoes which have been captured, undergone a judicial inveftigation? Yes, fuch flender investigation as the prize court (which of neceffity proceeds on the ex parte evidence of the claimants themselves) has has power to inftitute; the effect of which has been, to produce a tribe of fubfidiary impoftures, not lefs grofs than the principal frauds which they were adduced to fupport.' p. 95-99. He then proceeds to support his proposition, by specifying a number of cases, in which the evidence of neutral property, though supported and attested in such a way as to force a court of law to admit and receive it, was opposed by such insurmountable circumstances of absolute incredibility, as to leave no doubt in the mind of any impartial person as to its substantial falsity. He concludes this part of his argument by stating, that, even if it were admitted that the whole of this colonial produce were really transferred to neutrals, the gain of the enemy would scarcely be less substantial; as the profits of the neutral purchasers probably would not be more considerable than the commission which must be paid them, on the other supposition, for the use of their name and flag. In this way, our author is of opinion, that the indulgence shewn to the neutral trade, by relaxing the rule of the war 1756, has deprived us of the natural advantages of our maritime superiority, and enabled the enemy, not only to elude our hostility, but to replenish his exchequer by a revenue that might be turned, in part at least, into our own coffers; and to carry on a trade, by which our merchants and planters are undersold in the European market. This, however, he assures us, is by no means the whole of the mischief which has resulted from these arrangements; they tend directly to the depression of our maritime power, and the exaltation of the navy of France. These effects they produce, by the seduction of our seamen into the American merchant service by the temptation of high wages, and the prospect of being secure from impressment, in consequence of being presented with letters of naturalization in every port in the country; by the prisoners which are daily made by the enemies' privateers, without any possibility of reprisals upon our part; by the command which the French navy obtains of all the seafaring men in their dominions in consequence of the total suspension of their commerce; and, finally, by the discouragement of our own navy, from the impossibility of making captures, and the consequent cessation of these privateering expeditions, which formed such a school of naval enterprize, and afforded such an incentive to extraordinary courage and activity. The Such are the evils which our author ascribes to the interference of the neutral nations in the trade of the enemies' colonies. remedy our readers will all be prepared to anticipate. We must return to the salutary and equitable rule of the war 1756, and make prize of all vessels navigating either to or from the colonial settlements of the enemy. A 4 • This This remedy,' he obferves, cannot fail to be effectual. There will be no room for fictitious pretences, when the immediate voyage itself, in refpect to the place of departure or deftination, is a fufficient caufe of forfeiture; for the illegal fact must be known to every man on board; muft appear from the papers, unless all the public as well as private inftruments are fictitious; and befides, would, for the most part, be difcoverable, not only from the place of capture, and the course the ship is fteering, but from the nature of the cargo on board. The use, therefore, of neutral bottoms in the colonial trade, would foon be found by our enemies to yield them no protection. They would hoift again their own commercial colours; and either reftore to us all the fair fruits of an unrefifted naval fuperiority, or, by fending out convoys for the protection of their trade, open to us again that ancient field of offenfive war, in which we are fure to be victorious. Our feamen would be enriched, our imports would be very largely increased, and every western breeze would waft into the channel, not a neutral fail or two to furnish diplomatic fquabbles and litigation in the Admiralty, but numerous and valuable prizes, and fometimes entire fleets of merchantmen with their convoys, taken from open enemies and under hoftile colours. The captive flags of France, Holland, and Spain, would again be inceffantly seen at Plymouth and Spithead drooping below the Britifh enfigns; and the fpectacle would recruit for our navy far better than the most liberal bounties, Then, too, the enemy would be often obliged to hazard his fquadrons and fleets, for the relief of his colonies, as was ufual in former wars ; and the known partiality of Bonaparte to thefe poffeffions, especially to the Windward Antilles, would perhaps induce him to incur rifks for their protection, greater than those which their value in a national view might warrant. P. 141-3. Next comes the question of right;-and here our author, we cannot help thinking, is too concise and dogmatical. He says, in the first place, that the neutrals themselves have recognized the whole principle of the rule 1756, by submitting to that modification of it which still restrains their intercourse with the hostile colonies. He then refers, in a very triumphant manner, to the following short exposition of this principle, contained in a judgement of Sir W. Scott at the Admiralty. The general rule is, that the neutral has a right to carry on, in time of war, his accustomed trade to the utmost extent of which that accustomed trade is capable. Very different is the cafe of a trade which the neutral has never poffeffed, which he holds by no title of use and habit in times of peace, and which, in fact, he can obtain in war by no other title than by the fuccefs of the one belligerent against the other, and at the expense of that very belligerent under whofe fuccefs he sets up his title; and fuch I take to be the colonial trade, generally speaking. "What is the colonial trade, generally fpeaking? It is a trade generally nerally fhut up to the exclufive use of the mother country to which the colony belongs; and this to a double use-the one, that of supplying a market for the confumption of native commodities, and the other, of furnishing to the mother country the peculiar commodities of the colonial regions to these two purposes of the mother country, the general policy refpecting colonies belonging to the states of Europe, has reftricted them. "With respect to other countries, generally fpeaking, the colony has no exiftence. It is poffible that, indirectly and remotely, fuch colonies may affect the commerce of other countries. The manufactures of Germany may find their way into Jamaica or Guadaloupe, and the fugar of Jamaica or Guadaloupe into the interior parts of Germany; but as to any direct communication or advantage refulting therefrom, Guadaloupe and Jamaica are no more to Germany than if they were settlements in the mountains of the moon. To commercial purposes they are not in the fame planet. If they were annihilated, it would make no chafm in the commercial map of Hamburgh. If Guadaloupe could be funk in the fea by the effect of hoftility at the beginning of a war, it would be a mighty lofs to France, as Jamaica would be to England, if it could be made the subject of a fimilar act of violence; but fuch events would find their way into the chronicles of other countries as events of difinterefted curiofity, and nothing more. "Upon the interruption of a war, what are the rights of bellige rents and neutrals refpectively, regarding fuch places? It is an indubitable right of the belligerent to poffefs himself of fuch places, as of any other poffeffion of his enemy. This is his common right; but he has the certain means of carrying fuch a right into effect if he has a decided fuperiority at fea. Such colonies are dependent for their exiftence, as colonies, on foreign fupplies; if they cannot be supplied and defended, they muft fall to the belligerent of courfe; and if the belligerent chooses to apply his means to fuch an object, what right has a third party, perfectly neutral, to step in and prevent the execution? No exifting intereft of his is affected by it; he can have no right to apply to his own use the beneficial confequences of the mere act of the belligerent, and to fay, "True it is, you have, by force of arms, forced fuch places out of the exclufive poffeffion of the enemy; but I will share the benefits of the conqueft, and, by fharing its benefits, prevent its progrefs. You have, in effect, and by lawful means, turned the enemy out of the poffeffion which he had exclufively maintained against the whole world, and with which we had never prefumed to interfere; but we will interpofe to prevent his abfolute furrender, by the means of that very opening which the prevalence of your arms alone has effected ;-fupplies fhall be fent, and their products fhall be exported: you have lawfully destroyed his monopoly, but you fhall not be permitted to poffefs it yourfelf; we infift to fhare the fruits of your victories; and your blood and treasure have been expended, not for your own intereft, but for the common benefit of others. "2 “Upon |