ligence, but to a general laxity or want of efficiency-then such blockade is not valid." Wharton, Com. Am. Law, § 233, p. 332. Baker, referring to the fourth clause of the Declaration of Paris of 1856, which declares that "blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective," makes the singular statement: "This proposition has been adopted by most civilized nations with the exception of the United States, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela." No other principle was ever maintained by the United States, and it was chiefly against its violation that the United States went to war in 1812. See First Steps in Int. Law, by Sir Sherston Baker, Bart. (London 1899) 271. A blockade may be made effectual by batteries ashore as well as by ships afloat. In the case of an inland fort, the most effective blockade would be maintained by batteries commanding the river or inlet by which it may be approached, supported by a naval force sufficient to warn off innocent and capture offending vessels attempting to enter. The Circassian, 2 Wall. 135. 3. PAPER BLOCKADES. § 1270. "The fictitious blockades proclaimed by Great Britain and made the pretext for violating the commerce of neutral nations have been one of the greatest abuses ever committed on the high seas. During the late war they were carried to an extravagance which would have been ridiculous, if in their effects they had not inflicted such serious and extensive injuries on neutral nations. Ports were proclaimed in a state of blockade previous to the arrival of any force at them, were considered in that state without regard to intermissions in the presence of the blockading force, and the proclamations left in operation after its final departure; the British cruisers during the whole time seizing every vessel bound to such ports, at whatever distance from them, and the British prize courts pronouncing condemnations wherever a knowledge of the proclamation at the time of sailing could be presumed, although it might afterwards be known that no real blockade existed. The whole scene was a perfect mockery in which fact was sacrificed to form and right to power and plunder. The United States were among the greatest sufferers; and would have been still more so, if redress for some of the spoliations proceeding from this source had not fallen within the provisions of an article. in the treaty of 1794." Mr. Madison, Sec. of State, to Mr. Monroe, min. to England, Jan. 5, 1804, See, as to the conditions existing prior to the peace of Amiens, Moore, For documents relating to paper blockades, see app. to United States v. October 26, 1803, the commander of the British ship of war Bellerophon, off Cape François, announced that "every port in the island of St. Domingo" was in a state of blockade and warned vessels that if they were seen or found within three leagues of the land, after that date, they would be seized as prize. The only intimation which the United States appears to have received concerning this blockade was by the endorsement made on the register of an American ship which was afterwards communicated to the Department of State by a collector of customs in the United States, late in December, 1803. Mr. Adams, Sec. of State, to Mr. Cowper, March 17, 1821, 18 MS. Dom. On April 8, 1806, the British Government, in retaliation for a decree of Prussia, issued on the occupation of Hanover, excluding British trade, declared the mouths of the Ems, Weser, Elbe, and Trave to be in a state of blockade. On May 16, a similar declaration was made in respect of the whole coast of the continent from the river Elbe to the port of Brest, inclusive. In the following September, this blockade was declared to be discontinued as to the coast from the Elbe to the Ems. On November 21, 1806, Napoleon issued from the imperial camp at Berlin a decree which declared the British Islands to be in a state of blockade and all commerce and correspondence with them to be prohibited. Referring to this decree, Lord Howick, on January 7, 1807, issued an order in council by which neutral vessels were forbidden to trade from one port to another, both of which were in the possession or control of France or her allies. On the 11th of November, further orders in council were issued, which prohibited neutral vessels from trading with the ports of France and her allies and with all ports in Europe from which, though they were not at war with Great Britain, the British flag was excluded, unless such vessels should clear from a British port under regulations to be prescribed in the future. On December 17, 1807, Napoleon, in retaliation for these orders, issued his Milan decree which, besides declaring every ship that had submitted to search by the English to be good prize, repeated the declaration that the British Islands were in a state of blockade, and declared that every ship that should sail from or be destined to a port in Great Britain or the British possessions, or in any country occupied by the British troops, should be good prize. Against these various orders and decrees, the United States protested, and as measures of retaliation resorted to embargoes and non-intercourse, and in the case of Great Britain, which was aggravated by the question of impressment, eventually to war. Moore, Int. Arbitrations, V. 4447-4456. For the text of the various orders and decrees of the belligerent powers Count Romanzoff's circular of May 14, 1809, as to the blockade of the The Secretary of State reported on January 11, 1810, that he had no For President Madison's message of January 12, 1810, with accompanying papers, relative to the French blockade of ports in the Baltic, see 7 Wait's State Papers, 342. The position of the United States with regard to paper blockades is expounded by Mr. Pinkney in his note of January 14, 1811, to Lord Wellesley, Am. State Papers, For. Rel. III. 409; the position of the British Government is exhibited in notes of Mr. Foster, British min. at Washington, to Mr. Monroe, in Am. State Papers, For. Rel. III. 438. No actual blockade of any British port in the West Indies was maintained by the French during the period of French spoliation, and a ship laden with provisions, bound for one of such British ports, was not subject to condemnation by the French while the French treaty of 1778 remained in force. 66 Hooper v. United States, 22 Ct. Cl. 408. The British Government having repealed the orders in council and the blockade of May, 1806, and all other illegal blockades, and having declared that it would institute no blockade which should not be supported by an adequate force, it was thought better to leave that question on that ground, than to continue the war, to obtain a more precise definition of blockade, after the other essential cause of the war, that of impressment, should be removed." Mr. Monroe, Sec. of State, to the envoys at Ghent, June 23, 1814, Am. Although the commissioners of the United States, during the conference "This consideration ought to operate with still greater force in leading the British cabinet to an adjustment of the principal objects of collision between neutral and belligerent interests. The unexampled outrages upon all neutral rights which were sanctioned during the late wars both by Great Britain and France, were admitted by both to be unwarranted by the ordinary laws of nations. They were, on both sides, professed to be retaliations, and each party pleaded the excesses of the other as the justification of its own. Yet so irresistible is the tendency of precedent to become principle in that part of the law of nations which has its foundation in usage, that Great Britain, in her late war with the United States, applied against neutral maritime nations almost all the most exceptionable doctrines and practices which she had introduced during her war against France. The maritime nations were then too so subservient to her domination that in the Kingdom of the Netherlands a clearance was actually refused to vessels from thence to a port in the United States on the avowed ground that their whole coast had been declared by Great Britain to be in a state of blockade. The whole coast in a state of blockade, while the British commerce, upon every sea, was writhing under the torture inflicted by our armed vessels and privateers issuing from the ports thus pretended to be in blockade! The dereliction of the rights of maritime neutrality by all the allied powers at the congress of Vienna, and at the subsequent negotiations for settling the affairs of Europe at Paris, have so far given a tacit sanction to all the British practices in the late wars that none of them would have a right to complain if the United States, on the contingency of a maritime war in which they should be engaged, should apply to the neutral commerce of all those allies the doctrines which they thus suffered Great Britain, without remonstrance, to apply against it in her late contest with the United States." Mr. Adams, Sec. of State, to Mr. Rush, min. to England, Nov. 6. 1817, September 5, 1815, the Spanish minister at Washington announced that the captain-general of Caracas, General Morillo, was about to decree a blockade of the ports of the viceroyalty of Santa Fé, including Carthagena, and that every neutral vessel found on those coasts would be considered good prize. On March 2, 1816, he stated that, Carthagena having been compelled to surrender, General Morillo had, on the 19th of the preceding December, decided to continue the blockade from Santa Marta to the river Atrato, and had given orders that if any vessel should be met south of the mouths of the Magdalena or north of the parallel of Cape Tiburon on the Mosquito shore, and between the meridians of those points, she would be declared good prize, whatever her destination; but that the ports of Santa Marta and Puerto Bello would be open to the commerce of neutrals. Against this measure Mr. Monroe, on March 20, 1816, protested, on the ground that, while it declared a coast of several hundred miles to be in a state of blockade, adequate means for enforcing it did not exist. The Spanish minister replied that there were only three ports of entry on the coast in question, and that a squadron had sailed from Cadiz to enforce the blockade, but he also argued that the measure amounted merely to an enforcement of the laws relating to the Indies, by which foreign vessels found near or evidently shaping their course toward the Spanish colonies were, unless specially licensed to trade with them, liable to confiscation. On July 20, 1816, instructions were sent to Mr. Erving, American minister at Madrid, in regard to vessels which had been seized at Carthagena and to citizens of the United States who had been imprisoned there. The citizens had been released, but not the vessels. It appeared that the vessels were seized under the decree of December 19, 1815. In 1816 Mr. Christopher Hughes, jr., was sent by the United States to Carthagena for the purpose of reclaiming the property that had been seized. He was compelled to return unsatisfied. The claims were embraced in the settlement of 1819. Am. State Papers, For. Rel. IV. 156; Moore, Int. Arbitrations, V. 4494; See, also, 11 Wait's State Papers, 473. As to the blockade of certain ports in Spain, including Gibraltar, see "The renewal of the war in Venezuela has been signalized on the part of the Spanish commanders by proclamations of blockade unwarranted by the laws of nations, and by decrees regardless of those of humanity. With no other naval force than a single frigate, a brig, and a schooner, employed in transporting supplies from Curaçao to Porto Cabello, they have presumed to declare a blockade of more than twelve hundred miles of coast. To this outrage upon all the rights of neutrality, they have added the absurd pretension of interdicting the peaceable commerce of other nations with all the ports of the Spanish Main, upon the pretense that it had heretofore been forbidden by the Spanish colonial laws; and on the strength of these two inadmissible principles, they have issued commissions at Porto Cabello and in the island of Porto Rico to a swarm of privateers, which have committed extensive and ruinous depredations upon the lawful commerce of the United States, as well as upon that of other nations, and particularly of Great Britain. It was impossible that neutral nations should submit to such a system; the execution of which has been as strongly marked with violence and cruelty as was its origin |