Henry Alexander Munro-Butler-Johnstone

“ One is, that it is the interest of England to support the principle, because, our commerce and our carrying trade being the largest in the world, we present "the largest area of vulnerability." Now this argument is equivalent to saying that a big man ought not to fight a little man because his "area of vulnerability" is greater than that of the little man. True, his "area of vulnerability" is greater, but his striking power is proportionately greater too. So, in a commercial war, English commerce would no doubt suffer, but the enemy's commerce would be annihilated. ”

“ War, in fact, is a declaration of distraint and death against your adversary, and you distrain his goods before you take his life. To give up the right of distraint is to necessitate the greater use of the right of killing, and, as John Stuart Mill said: "He was at a loss to conceive how humanity was advanced by sparing people's property and shooting at their bodies." And yet this principle of the immunity of private property at sea is constantly supported on the very grounds of humanity and civilization. ”

“ I cannot disguise from myself; and I do not think I am travelling out of the record by insisting for a moment on this consideration, that the character of many, if not most, of the late wars in Europe has been such as to throw discredit on belligerents and belligerents' rights, and to invest with a credit and dignity, which by no means essentially belongs to them, neutrals and so-called neutral rights. Wars of aggression and of policy, thinly disguising motives of covetousness and brigandage, have been the general character of the wars that have taken place in our day. ”

“ Exempt mercantile ships from capture and she will be able to carry on her vast trade, the carrying trade included, as securely in war as in peace, her commercial resources will remain intact, and she will consequently be able to bear the strain of a war uncrippled by financial distress. As matters stand at present, you have either gone too far or not far enough. Your enemy's commerce will sail under the neutral flag. His only sacrifice will be the carrying trade, and, as yours is the only large carrying trade in the world, his loss in this respect will be borne with a light heart. ”

“ We must rather consider reason itself than treaties. I cannot see any cause why it should not be lawful to take enemies' goods, though found in the ship of a nation not at war; for I consider it as the property of an enemy, and belonging by the right of war to the conqueror. ”

“ It is as if a nation were deliberately to tear up its own title-deeds. From that of a first-rate maritime, it descends at once to the position of a fourth-rate military Power, with the capacity of putting in the field an army of about the size of that of Servia, and with all the obligations of Empire still incumbent upon it. ”

“ In a famous instrument in which neutral rights are put forward, it is said that "there is no reason why the neutral should forego the considerable advantage offered him by a state of war between other nations." This pretension at any rate puts the matter in its true light. It is in fact a claim to make profit out of its neighbours' calamities, to coin money out of their blood, and reap a harvest from their misfortunes—a claim, when analysed, as preposterous and as monstrous as was ever put forward. ”

“ I am not in favour of binding ourselves beforehand not to use this or that mode of naval warfare. It is for the interest, I believe, of a maritime nation like ourselves to use all modes of naval warfare, to put forth its naval strength in all directions, and all juggles by which modes of warfare are limited and crippled must turn out for the exclusive benefit of the weaker maritime belligerent. ”

“ A principle so monstrous in itself, so contrary to the law of nations, and so injurious to the maritime interests of the country, that if it had been persisted in, we ought not to have concluded the war with those powers whilst a single man, a single shilling, or a single drop of blood remained in the country. ”

“ Our whole reliance has hitherto been on the sea; but from the moment that we lose the command of the sea, and yield up our supremacy there, that which formerly was our surest defence becomes the chief source of our danger, and we become exposed to invasion, and consequently destruction, along the whole periphery of our coasts. To defend England (to say nothing of India) territorially, without the command of the sea, is a simple strategical and military impossibility. ”

“ Nations at war with each other have been compared to individuals carrying on war with each other in the primitive condition of society. If I am at war with a man, I have no right to insist on any one taking my side in the dispute, but I have a right to insist on no one, who claims the privileges of neutrality, taking my adversary's side, which if he does, he violates impartiality and departs from neutrality. ”

“ That the exercise of the right of seizure and confiscation, whether by State vessels or commissioned private vessels, while it is the most effective, is the mildest and least cruel of all methods of making war. That a document, known as the Declaration of Paris of 1856, nevertheless assumed to abolish this right, and to prohibit its exercise by Great Britain. That an adherence to the rules laid down by the Declaration of Paris would in the event of war immediately deprive Great Britain of the whole of the carrying trade, and drive it into neutral vessels ”

“ The game of maritime coalition against England has been played out. Twice, nay three times, it has been tried, and once at any rate under singularly favourable auspices, and each time it came to lamentable grief. The coalesced Neutrals went to war, or threatened to go to war, to secure the carrying trade of the weaker belligerent. Instead of getting it they lost their own. European interests too have changed. Formerly it was considered that England's maritime interests were in one scale, and in the other the general interests of all Continental nations. ”

“ THE DECLARATION OF PARIS
AND
MARITIME RIGHTS.
CHAPTER I.
Blockades.
To begin with, What is "War ?
War is a sentence of death and confiscation pronounced against your enemy for refusing to do you Justice. War for any other motive, or on any other pretext, is the greatest of national crimes; and wars of ambition or aggrandisement are brigandage and rapine on a stupendous scale. War is either the greatest of crimes or the most sacred of duties; and, when it is the latter, the man who talks of peace is either a traitor or a coward. ”

“ I claim no dominion over the sea, I only claim to prevent the neutral from "aiding and succouring" my enemy;—and, if the reason alleged (absence of dominion over the sea) is good for anything, it is good to prevent the search for contraband—which is an undisputed belligerent right. ”

“ Speaking generally, it is a gross reflection on the courage and manliness of our country to insinuate that England, that knew how to vindicate triumphantly her maritime rights against coalesced Europe at epochs of extreme national difficulty and peril, has no longer the spirit to maintain them in this the heyday of her prosperity, and in the fulness of her strength. ”

“ I will begin by granting all they contend for, and I will ask, does it not amount to this: "There shall be no more war upon the sea, where we have always been strong, but only on land where we must be necessarily weak;" for the moment such a principle is granted there can be no more such a thing as naval warfare. ”

“ It is manifest that Great Britain, being essentially a maritime country, must depend mainly for her defence upon the power of waging war effectually at sea. It is equally manifest that war can only be waged effectually at sea by the capture of enemy's property, whether in enemy's or in neutral vessels, and that the full strength of the country can only be put forth by arming and commissioning private volunteer vessels as an auxiliary to the State Navy. ”

“ The second armed neutrality took place at a conjunction of affairs apparently equally favourable to such a combination. The success of France against Austria, and the desertion by Russia of the allies, the Emperor Paul becoming fascinated by Napoleon's genius, were events likely to check the public spirit of England, and to incline it to compromise its own rights. But such was by no means the actual result. Never did the spirit of the country rise higher than in 1800. ”

“ The principle that the neutral flag covers the merchandize enables the neutral to make a profit by the blood of the belligerents, and so divides the interests of the community of nations, which is not the least of the objections against it. But this proposal divides the nation itself into two sections, and enables one-half of it to fatten on the blood of the other half. ”

“ A law merely founded on convention, however general the agreement, is a law of nations in an inferior sense only. A fortiori when the agreement is only partial, the term "law of nations" is not applicable at all.
But when a law is both agreed upon by common consent, and is in accordance with the highest natural law, and is so regarded by the great authorities on International Law, then it becomes entitled to the full dignity of a law of nations in the largest acceptation of the term.
The maritime code of the Consolato del Mare constituted the maritime law of nations in this highest sense. ”

“ Their argument is this: the principles of the Declaration of Paris, as it stands, are demonstrably fatal to the naval superiority, to the carrying trade, and the mercantile marine of this country; England is the great carrier of the world, and it is in her capacity as a carrying nation that she would be utterly stricken in a war. ”

“ And when we consider that the carrying trade of almost every nation is, in peace, carried on by itself, and that England is almost the only nation which has a carrying trade over and above the requirements of its own commerce, it is obvious that this claim to carry belligerents^ goods is not a claim for the retention of a privilege which the neutral enjoyed in peace, but for the acquisition of an advantage which the neutral never even pretended to in peace. ”

“ But even if it amounted to an appreciable loss, when rights come into conflict, the lesser right must yield to the greater, and against the neutral right to carry must be set the belligerent rights of nations at war perhaps for their very existence, and in defence, may be, of the highest interests of mankind. ”

“ On the contrary, in their conduct in 1798, in spite of their well-known sympathies with France, they declined to refuse to England rights which were secured to her by the law of nations, or to allow to France rights which she had deliberately surrendered by treaty. "The desire of establishing universally the principle that neutral bottoms make neutral goods is perhaps felt by no nation on earth more strongly than by the United States. Perhaps no nation on earth is more deeply interested in its establishment. ”

“ England is like a big company competing with and beating down a little tradesman; it can afford to lose two sovereigns to the other's one, and notwithstanding, to ruin him and force him to shut up shop; and, as the case in question supposes legitimate reasons of war between them, England would be justified as well as wise in accepting the conflict. To think that we can make war and suffer no loss is to suppose that one can make omelettes without breaking eggs.
The other argument is founded on a false analogy. ”

“ It is said that private property is spared on land in war, and therefore it ought to be spared at sea. I will not stop to dispute the fact, although it would scarcely be beside the question to ask whether the villas and gardens around Paris were spared by the Prussian army, or the private property of the Southern States by Sherman's troops in his famous march, any more than in Westphalia in the time of Turenne, or in the campaigns of the great Napoleon. ”

“ The fact is we hear a great deal of neutral rights but very little of neutrals' obligations, and yet common sense and the conscience of mankind agree in laying down that, if there is any meaning in the term Community of nations^ and if there are any duties which nations owe one another more sacred and binding than others, it is the obligation to endeavour to shorter, the duration of wars, to reconcile by every means in their power the belligerents to each other, and studiously to avoid everything which could prolong the duration of hostilities. ”

“ The purely military nations may, I think, be dismissed from consideration; as they are powerless on the sea, this argument, founded as it is on an implied menace of power, cannot apply to them. With respect to the United States, they are really out of court in imposing obligations on us which they have refused to accept themselves, and, whatever complaints we may have had to urge in our dealings with the United States Government, it has never shown a tendency to disregard well-established legal principles. ”

“ The day might come when some disaster to our regular military marine might endanger our very existence, and then it might become expedient and highly necessary to call into activity every privateer which the wealth of our private enterprise and the daring of our seafaring population could place at the disposal of the Crown. ”

“ A very prevalent confusion of ideas on the subject of privateers has considerably enhanced the prejudice against them. It is often stated that letters of marque may be issued to individuals of any nationality to prey on the commerce of the enemy, or, at any rate that an individual of the nationality of the belligerent may fit out a privateer in any neutral port, select his crew from sailors of any nationality, and set out with his letters of marque to prey on the commerce of the enemy. ”