right of war, acknowledged by the law of nations as existing in favor of one belligerent against the other, and regulated by the rules of international law.

A few extracts from an approved elementary work will be sufficient to show the nature of a blockade.

"Among the rights of belligerents, there is none more clear and incontrovertible, or more just and necessary in the application, than that which gives rise to the law of blockade. Bynkershoek says, it is founded on the principles of natural reason, as well as on the usage of nations; and Grotius considers the carrying of supplies to a besieged town, or a blockaded port, as an offence exceedingly aggravated and injurious. They both agree that a neutral may be dealt with severely; and Vattel says, he may be treated as an enemy. The law of blockade is, however, so harsh and severe in its operation, that, in order to apply it, the fact of the actual blockade must be established by clear and unequivocal evidence; and the neutral must have had due previous notice of its existence; and the squadron allotted for the purposes of its execution must be competent to cut off all communication with the interdicted place or port; and the neutral must have been guilty of some act of violation, either by going in, or attempting to enter, or by coming out with a cargo laden after the commencement of the blockade. The failure of either of the points requisite to establish the existence of a legal blockade, amounts to an entire defeasance of the measure, even though the notification of the blockade had issued from the authority of the government itself.

"A blockade must be existing in point of fact; and in order to constitute that existence, there must be a power present to enforce it."

"The definition of a blockade given by the convention of the Baltic powers, in 1780, and again in 1801, and by the ordinance of Congress, in 1781, required that there should be actually a number of vessels stationed near enough to the port to make the entry apparently dangerous."

"The occasional absence of the blockading squadron, produced by accident, as in the case of a storm, and when the station is resumed with due diligence, does not suspend the blockade, provided the suspension, and the reason of it, be known; and the law considers an attempt

to take an advantage of such an accidental removal as an attempt to break the blockade, and as a mere fraud. . . . . . But if the blockade be raised by the enemy, or by applying the naval force, or a part of it, though only for a time, to other objects, or by the mere remissness of the cruisers, the commerce of neutrals to the place ought to be free. The presence of a sufficient force is the natural criterion by which the neutral is enabled to ascertain the existence of the blockade."

"The object of a blockade is not merely to prevent the importation of supplies, but to prevent export as well as import, and to cut off all communication of commerce with the blockaded port. The act of egress is as culpable as the act of ingress, if it be done fraudulently. .... The modern practice does not require that the place should be invested by land as well as by sea, in order to constitute a legal blockade; and if a place be blockaded by sea only, it is no violation of belligerent rights for the neutral to carry on commerce with it by inland communications.

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"It is absolutely necessary that the neutral should have had due notice of the blockade, in order to affect him with the penal consequences of a violation of it. . . . . . After the blockade is once established, and due notice received, either actually or constructively, the neutral is not permitted to go to the very station of the blockading force, under pretence of inquiring whether the blockade had terminated, because this would lead to fraudulent attempts to evade it, and would amount in practice to a universal license to attempt to enter, and, on being prevented, to claim the liberty of going elsewhere."

"A neutral cannot be permitted to place himself in the vicinity of a blockaded port, if his situation be so near that he may, with impunity, break the blockade whenever he pleases, and slip in without obstruction. If that were to be permitted, it would be impossible that any blockade could be maintained."

"The fact of clearing out or sailing for a blockaded port is, in itself, innocent, unless it be accompanied with knowledge of the blockade."

"In Yeaton vs. Fry, the Supreme Court of the United States coincided essentially with the doctrine of the English prize courts; for they held that sailing from Tobago for Curaçoa, knowing the latter to be blockaded, was a breach of the blockade, and, according to the opinion

of Mr. Justice Story, in the case of the Nereide, 'the act of sailing with intent to break a blockade is a sufficient breach to authorize confisca

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tion.'. . . . . If the ports be not very wide apart, the 'act of sailing for the blockaded port may reasonably be deemed evidence of a breach of it, and an overt act of fraud upon the belligerent rights."

"The consequence of a breach of blockade is the confiscation of the ship; and the cargo is always, prima facie, implicated in the guilt of the owner or master of the ship...... If a ship has contracted guilt by a breach of blockade, the offence is not discharged until the end of the voyage. The penalty never travels on with the vessel farther than to the end of the return voyage; and if she is taken in any part of that voyage, she is taken in delicto."—1 Kent's Com., 143–151.

It appears from all this, that a blockade admits, by implication, that the port is in the possession of a party or power with which the blockading party is at war, and with which neutral nations, if they please, may hold commercial intercourse, subject to the laws of war, without payment of duties to the party instituting the blockade, or interruption by that party except by the blockade, or other warlike operations. In other words, the port is governed for the time being, as between the blockading party and neutral nations, by the law of nations applicable to war between two powers, instead of being governed, as to them as well as its possessors, by the domestic law applicable to the insurrectionary resistance to the established government. That government cannot say to neutrals, "We debar you from entering this port because it is blockaded, and if you violate the blockade, you will be liable to capture and condemnation," - leaving them to inquire whether the blockade is maintained, and to govern themselves by the law applicable to it, and at the same time say, "All intercourse with the place is forbidden, because it is our port, but, by reason of insurrectionary force, commerce there cannot be carried on with the United States, and the place, therefore, is no longer to be treated as a port during the continuance of the insurrection."

The right to treat the insurrectionary force as a belligerent power by the institution of a blockade, thus leaving neutral nations, at liberty, if they please, to hold commercial intercourse with the insurgents as a belligerent power, so far as they may without a violation of the blockade, is entirely consistent with the position that the insurgents themselves are mere rebels and traitors. In fact, any foreign nation may oblige the government assailed to resort to a blockade in order to prevent commercial intercourse with the insurgents, so far as such nation is concerned, by an acknowledgment of their independence, or, according to modern usage, by a recognition of them as a belligerent power, with a proclamation of neutrality between the contending parties, which certainly can in no way affect the right of the existing government to deal with the insurgents as traitors, under its own municipal law. And if the government pleases to institute a blockade in anticipation of such compulsion, no implication can arise from it changing the legal relations of the parties.

Another good reason exists why the government assailed may prefer to give to the insurgent force this character of a belligerent party, so far as its relations with foreign nations are concerned. The laws of blockade, and of capture for violation of it, and the proceedings for adjudication thereupon, are, in general, well settled and defined; while the rules which must regulate punishment for any violation of an order closing the port, and forbidding entrance into it, as a means of suppressing the insurrection, without a blockade, are not so well settled; and attempts to deal with infractions of such order by vessels of foreign powers would lead to unnecessary collisions, certainly after a recognition of belligerency.

It has been contended that a nation cannot blockade its own ports; but this position is not tenable when the port is in possession of a hostile force. To deny the right of blockade in such case would be to deny its right to the port, or, practically, to make it a free port until the government which for

merly held and still claimed it should destroy it; for no mere order or act for closing it could be of any avail against a foreign nation which pleased to recognize the insurgents as belligerents, without a blockade superadded.

This leads us to a more extended examination of the relations which foreign nations do or may, according to the rules of international law, sustain to those who, under the plea of Secession, are using the names and styles of several States, and who, with the assumption of State and Confederate authority, are waging insurrectionary warfare against the United States. It is apparent, from what has been said, that these relations might be either one of three different descriptions.

1. In the case of an insurrection, accompanied by an attempt to establish an independent government, a foreign nation may decline in any wise to interfere in the contest, treating the case precisely as if it were an insurrection which in no way affected its interests, except as the actual force of the insurgents interrupts the exercise of authority by the government assailed in places where that government had before exercised it, and still claims the right to continue its exercise. This is substantially the position of Russia, and, in fact, of all European and other foreign powers, as respects the United States, Great Britain, France, and Spain excepted.

The foreign government which places itself in this relation may, and in some contingencies must, recognize the existence of the insurrection, and vary its action, or that of its citizens and subjects, accordingly. As, for instance, if the United States government should prohibit the entrance of any vessel into a particular port or ports, because the people of the place were in a state of insurrection, so that commerce with the United States under existing treaties could not be carried on there, a government declining any recognition of the insurgents, or interference with reference to the contest, would instruct its subjects, consuls, and officers to regard the prohibition, and comply with the regulation of the existing government, as if that