to engage during war in a trade from which they were excluded in time of peace, was enforced by the British admiralty courts with new stringency under cover of the doctrine of continuous voyages. Moreover, the British government in 1806, in retaliation for a decree of Prussia, which was issued under Napoleonic compulsion, excluding British trade from that country, declared the mouths of the Ems, the Weser, the Elbe, and the Trave to be in a state of blockade. On November 21, 1806, Napoleon fulminated from the imperial camp at Berlin a decree declaring the British Islands to be in a state of blockade and prohibiting all commerce and correspondence with them. Great Britain replied by an order in council of January 6, 1807, forbidding neutral vessels to trade between ports in the control of France or her allies; and by still another order, November 11, 1807, she forbade such vessels to trade with the ports of France and her allies, or even with any port in Europe from which the British flag was excluded, without a clearance obtained in a British port. Napoleon's answer was the Milan decree of December 17, 1807, by which it was declared that every vessel that had submitted to search by an English ship, or consented to a voyage to England, or paid any tax to the English government, as well as every vessel that should sail to or from a port in Great Britain or her possessions, or in any country occupied by British troops, should be deemed good prize.

These measures, with their bald assertions of paper blockades and sweeping denials of the rights of neutrality, the United States, as practically the only remaining neutral, met with protests, with embargoes, with non-intercourse, and finally, in the case of Great Britain, which was aggravated by the question of impressment, to which President Madison gave so much prominence in his war message, with hostile resistance, while from France a considerable indemnity was afterwards obtained by treaty. The pretensions against which the United States contended are no longer justified on legal grounds. Since the Declaration of Paris of 1856, it has been universally admitted that a blockade, in order to be valid, must be effective. The right of neutrals to trade with belligerents is acknowledged, subject only to the law of contraband and of blockade.

There is one radical limitation to belligerent activities, which, although often urged, has not yet been adopted. This is the inhibition of the capture of private property at sea. Strongly advocated by Franklin, it was introduced into the first treaty between the United States and Prussia, in the signature of which he was associated with Adams and Jefferson. John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William L. Marcy, and Hamilton Fish are among the great Secretaries of State who have given the principle their support. President McKinley, in his annual mes

sage of December 5, 1898, suggested to Congress that the Executive be authorized to correspond with the governments of the principal maritime powers of the world with a view to incorporate it into the permanent law of civilized nations. This recommendation is cordially renewed by President Roosevelt in his annual message of December 7, 1903, in which the exemption, except as to contraband of war, is advocated not only as a matter of "humanity and morals," but also as a measure altogether compatible with the practical conduct of war at sea.

III

FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

IN maintaining the right of neutrals freely to navigate the ocean in pursuit of innocent commerce, the early statesmen of America, while sustaining a predominant national interest, gave their support to a cause from the eventual triumph of which the whole world was to derive an incalculable benefit. But it was not in time of war alone that commerce was exposed to attacks at sea. Although the exorbitant pretensions of the sixteenth century, by which the navigation even of the Atlantic and the Pacific was assumed to be susceptible of engrossment, had, before the end of the eighteenth, fallen into desuetude, much remained to be accomplished before the exhibition of an acknowledged national flag would assure to the peaceful mariner an unmolested passage. Ere this great end could be attained, it was necessary that various exaggerated claims of dominion over adjacent seas should be denied and overcome, that the "right of search" should be resisted and abandoned, and that piracy should be extirpated.

In placing the danger from "water thieves" before the peril of "waters, winds, and rocks," Shylock described a condition of things that long survived his own times. At the close of the eighteenth century, a merchantman built for long voyages still differed little in armament from a man-of-war. Whether it rounded the Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, it was exposed to the depredations of ferocious and well-armed marauders, and if it passed through the Straits of Gibraltar it was forced to encounter maritime blackmail in its most systematic and most authoritative form. On the African coast of the Mediterranean lay the Barbary powers-the empire of Morocco, and the regencies of Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers-which had for generations subsisted by depredations on commerce. In this way they had won the opprobrious title of "piratical states," but they wore it with a pampered and supercilious dignity. Even in the exchange of courtesies they exhibited a haughty parsimony, exacting from the foreign man-of-war the generous requital of a barrel of powder for every gun with which they returned its salute. They had every reason to know that their power was understood and dreaded. In their navies might be found the products of the ship-building skill of England, France, Spain, and Venice. In war, civilized powers did not always scruple to make use of their aid. Their mode of life was diplomatically recognized, and to some ex