The Sun.
London, England, 1862-11-25 00:00:00

31ARI7IME RIGH7S.

DISCUSSION AT THE JURIDICAL SOCIETY.
At the usual bi-monthly meeting of the Juridical
Society, held last night at their rooms, St. Martin's-
place, Trafalgar-square (Lord Stanley, M.P., in the
chair), the discussion was resumed on Mr. West-
lake's paper, relative to the proposed alterations in
the law of blockade.

Mr. COLLIER, M.P., opened the discussion. Re-
ferring to the proposition of Mr. Cobden, that no
place should be blockaded unless it W3E4 invested
both by sea and land, he was of opinion that the
other nations would not agree to it ; and what the
country had to consider was the difference between
the injury which it inflicted and the injury which
it suffered. Mr. Cobden seemed to him to beg a
1 large part of the question when he assumed that
this nation could have a protracted war only with
such great powers as Russia, France, and America.
But England might have wars with smaller States,
and if she relinquished the right of blockade she
would give up the only means she had of coercing
such nations, for it was impossible she could land
armies upon their coasts, she not being a military
nation. No doubt the blockade of the Southern
ports of America was injurious to England as a
neutral, but it was far more injurious to the Con-
federates, for were it not for that they (the Confe-
derates) would now be independent. He would not
enter into the question if private property should
be inviolate at sea, but he was sure the relinquish-
ment of the right of blockcde, allowed and acted
upon by all nations, would be injurious to this
country.

Mr. E. WEBSTER disagreed from the position
taken up by Sir G. C. Lewis, that war put an end
to all treaties between the belligerents,
and there-
fore he held that if the relinquishmento block-
ade
were generally provided for by treaty between
the mari • time powers, it would thence become an
article of the law of nations which no State
would dare to violate.
Mr. PHINN regretted that the question of the in-
violability of private property at sea was not made
the subject of discussion. It was the established
law of nations that one nation could blockade not
only particular ports, but the entire coasts of its
enemy ; and even the Americans, who were formerly
the loudest in their complaints of it,were now them-
selves but too ready to act upon it.
Mr. W. M. BEST considered that Mr. Cobden
confounded the right of blockade with the duty of
blockading. Every nation had the right, but it was
a question of expediency for the consideration of
each nation whether it would or would not. exercise
it. The object of all just wars was to inflict upon
an enemy such an amount of injury as would coerce
him into submission to the law of n.dions, when by
the violation of it he had provoked the hostilities.
Blockade cut him off from commerce, and so de-
prived him of the sinews of war, and any neutral
which supplied h'm with them was an accomplice
in his crime. He did not mean his remarks to
apply to wars undertaken for military glory, law-
less aggression, or the maintenance of an idea, for
those who were the promoters of such wars were
the enemies of the human race.
Mr. WESTLAKE briefly replied, and the proceed-
ings were brought to a conclusion with the usual,
complimentary vote.

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