The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-16 00:00:00

3114 COBDEN ON MARITIME LA IV.

Mr. Cobden has addressed the following letter to
Mr. Henry Ashworth, president of the Manchester
Chamber of Commerce :

London, April 10, 1862.

My dear Sir.—l avail myself of your kind permission to
address you a letter on the present unsatisfactory state of
international maritime law, as affecting the rights of belli-
gerents and neutrals.

It is not necessary that I should dwell at length on the
particular branch of the subject lo which the debate on
Mr. Horsfall's motion was, as I venture to think, too ex-
clusively confined,—whether private property at sea should
be exempted from capture by armed Government ships in
time of war. That question was satisfactorily disposed of,
not less by the practical force of the reasoning with which
the motion was supported, than by the weak and irrelevant
arguments with which it was opposed. A statement of the
simple facts of the case, as they affect the interests of British
capitalists, ought to be decisive of the course we should take
without the necessity of one syllable of discussion. Here is a
country the average value of whose ships and cargoes afloat
exceeds £100,000,000, which is more than double the
amount possessed by any other state. A proposal is made
by the United States, with the concurrence:of France, Rus-
sia, and other countries, to exempt this property from
legalised plunder in the case of war. Our merchants and
shipowners are, naturally, eager to close with so advanta-
geous an offer, which is, however, peremptorily rejected by
the British Government.

One of the arguments urged by a member of the Cabinet
to justify this rejection need not alarm us. It is alleged
that such a stipulation would not be respected in time of
war. At the worst, this would only leave us where we
now are. If, however, an engagement were entered into,
by a formal convention of the maritime powers, for insur-
ing the inviolability of private property at sea, it would
become a recognised part of international law; and I do
not believe that a judge, sitting in any prize court in the
civilised world, would afterwards condemn as lawful cap-
ture, ships or cargoes seized in violation of that law. Sure
I am, at least, that it is the duty of those filling high
office in this country to brand with dishonour the viola-
tors of such a solemn engagement, and not to seem, in antici-
pation, to justify, or even palliate, their infamy. I have had
some difficulty in believing those parties to be serious, who,
in order to reconcile us to this unequal game of pillage, put
forth the argument that it is desirable to subject our ship-
owners to the penalty of ruin in the event of war as the best
means of binding the nation ovci to keep the peace. If a
majority of the Cabinet, and both Houses of Parliament,
were composed of shipowners, there might be some consis-
tency in this proposition. But if power and responsibility
are to be united in the same hands, there is another body of
proprietors whose fortunes might with greater justice be
made liable to confiscation in case of war. The argument
is, however, unworthy of serious refutation.
Had not some of the opponents of Mr. Horsfall's motion
professed to doubt whether the Paris declaration in favour
of neutrals was irrevocable, they would obviously have
been unable to oppose it. But the Paris Congress of 1856
merely recognised a state of things wh ch, as Mr. Baring
remarked, had arisen out of the progress of events ; it no
more created those events than the adoption of the Grego-
rian Calendar in 1752 produced the astronomical laws
which rendered that reform in our style necessary ; and
any attempt of our statesmen now to revert to the treat-
ment of neutrals sanctioned by our prize courts in 1810
would place them on a level with those politicians whom
Hogarth depicts, in his famous election scene, clamouring
to their candidees, " Give us back our eleven days I "
My principal object, however, in writing is to show that
the issue raised by Mr. Horsfall's motion, when taken alone,
is now of little practical value. The question has assumed
larger dimensions in consequence of the later proceedings of
the United States Government. The facts of the case,
which are not sufficiently known to the publid, are as follow :
In 1856, as you are aware, Mr. Marcy, Foreign Secretary
to President Pierce, when replying to the invitation from
the Paris Congress to agree to the abolition of privateering,
made the memorable counter proposal to Europe to exempt
the private property of belligerents at sea from capture,
both by privateers and armed government ships. This offer,
as I have stated, was favourably received by France, Rus-
sia, and other maritime powers, but was rejected by the
British Government. The election for the presidency took
place in the autumn of 1856, and Mr. Buchanan was chosen
the successor to Mr. Pierce. The question of international
maritime law now underwent further discussion in Ame-
rica, and it was contended that, in addition to the exemp-
tion of private property from capture, when at sea, it
should be free from molestation when entering or leaving a
commercial port; that, in fine, blockades should be re-
stricted to naval arsenals, and towns which were at the
same time invested by an army on land. * * * In the
course of their discussions President Buchanan addressed a
letter to the Chairman of the New York Chamber of Com-
merce, in which he said :—" We must obtain the consent of
the powerful naval nations that merchant vessels shall nct
be blockaded in port, but be suffered to pass the blockading
squadron and go out to sea." The consequence of this
state of opinion was that Mr. Dallas, the United States
Minister at London, was in 1857 instructed to suspend the
negotiations which had been opened upon the basis of Mr.
Marcy's proposition.
Thus the matter remained till the spring of 1859, when,
on the breaking ont ef the war in Italy, a circular despatch
was transmitted from Mr. Cass, PrestaeLit, Buchanan's
foreign secretary, to the representatives of the United
States at the European capitals, suggesting still further
reforms in international maritime law. An unsuccessful
effort was made, by Mr. Lindsay, to induce our Government
to lay on the table of the house a copy of this document ; but
the substance of its most important proposal was explained
by Lord John Russell, when communicating to the House
(February 18, 1861) the particulars of the interview at
which Mr. Dallas had read to him, as Foreign Minis-
ter, this despatch :—Mr. Cass was represented by his Lord-
ship to have declared that "he considered that the right
of blockade, as authorised by the law of nations, was
liable to very great abuse ; and that the only case in which
a blockade ought to be permitted was when a land army
was besieging a fortified place, and a fleet was employed
to blockade it on the other side ; but that any attempt to
intercept trade by blockade, or to blockade places which
were commercial ports, was an abuse of the right that
ought not to be permitted." Lord Russell took this oppor-
tunity of explaining to the house his reasons for opposing
these views of the American Government, and which were
in substance the same as those with which Mr. Marcy's
proposal had been met—namely, that the system of com•
mercial blockades is essential to the maintenance of our
naval supremacy.
These incidents have a most important significance, if
viewed in connection with present events. We live in an
age of rapid transitions, which warn us against too obsti-
nate an adherence to ancient precedent or blind routine.
If the proposal of the United States to abolish commercial
blockades had been favourably received by the British
Government, there can be no doubt, from the known ten-
dency of other maritime powers, that it might have become
a part of the law of nations, and in that case the commerce
between England and the Southern States of the Ameri-
can Union would have been uninterrupted by the present
war,—for the blockade is acknowledged by Europe only as
a belligerent right, and not as the exercise of municipal
authority. In justice to the American Government, and
to prevent any misapprehension of the following argument,
I am bound to express the opinion that the closing of the
cotton ports is virtually our own act. We have imposed
upon ourselves as neutrals the privations and sufferings in-
cidental to a commercial blockade, because we assume that
we are interested in reserving to ourselves the belligerent
right which we now concede to others.

Let us consider, for a moment, whether this policy will
bear the test of reason, fact, and experience. * * It
may be alleged of nearly all articles of food or raw
materials, transported over sea, that more than one-half
is destined for these islands. It follows that were we, in
the exercise of the belligerent right of blockade, to pre-
vent the exportation of those commodities, we should
inflict greater injury on ourselves than on all the rest of
the world, not excepting the country with which we were
at war; for if we could effectually close the ports of one
or more of these countries against both exports and im-
ports, we should be merely intercepting the supply of com-
parative luxuries to them, while we arrested the flow of the
necessaries of life to ourselves ; and for every cultivator of
the soil, engaged in the production of cotton or other raw
material, thereby doomed to idleness, three or four persons
would be deprived of employment in. the distribution and
manufacture of these commodities.

These facts are an answer to those who maintain that it
is necessary to reserve in our hands the right of blockade,
as an instrument of coercion in case of war. Against such
countries as France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, &e.,
blockades have lost their force, owing to the extension of
the railway system throughout the continent of Europe.
In cases where a blow may still be struck at the commerce
of a nation--of what use, I would ask, is a weapon of offence
which recoils with double force on ourselves ? It would be
but a poor consolation to our population, who were sub_
jected to the evils of enforced idleness and starvation, to be
told that the food and raw materials destined for their sub-
sistence and employment were rotting in the granaries of
ruined cultivators in Russia or America.

These considerations have always practically outweighed
the blockading theory, even when our necessities, as a com-
mercial and manufacturing people,. were much less than at
present. If we consult the experience of our past wars, we
shall find that, as a belligerent, we have never attempted to
prevent the productions of our enemies from reaching our
shores. It is true, we have maintained, for our navy, the
traditional right and duty of a blockade, whilst (I beg your
attention to the distinction) we have invariably connived at
its evasim. I will cite a few examples. We all know how
systematically our blockade of France, and other parts of
the coast of the continent, was relaxed by licenses during
the great war with Napoleon, and it is notorious that,
at the height of that war, the deficiency of our own har-
vests was repeatedly supplied from the corn fields of
our most deadly enemy. Nor must we forget that the
celebrated orders in Council, the most gigantic of all
blockades, were ultimately revoked in the interests of our
own manufactures and commerce. Again, in the war
with the United States, in 1813, whilst professing to
blockade that coast, our Giovenunent resisted the demands