Nathan Clifford

“ All foreign writers on international law concur in the opinion that the immediate and necessary consequence of a declaration of war is to interdict all intercourse or dealings between the subjects of the belligerent states. ”

“ Partnership with a foreigner is dissolved by the same event which makes him an alien enemy, because there is in that case an utter incompatibility created by operation of law between the partners as to their respective rights, duties, and obligations, both public and private, which necessarily dissolves the relation, independent of the will or acts of the parties. ”

“ Cases where the courts of justice are closed in consequence of insurrection or rebellion are not within the express terms of any such exception, but the statute of limitations was passed in 1623, more than a century before it came to be understood that debts due to alien enemies were not subject to confiscation. Down to 1737, says Chancellor Kent, the opinion of jurists was in favor of the right to confiscate, and many maintained that such debts were annulled by the declaration of war. ”

“ Constant usage and practice of belligerent nations from the earliest times subjected enemy's goods in neutral vessels to capture and condemnation as prize of war, but the maxim is now universally acknowledged that "free ships make free goods" which is another victory of commerce over the feelings of avarice and revenge. ”

“ War, when duly declared or recognized as such by the war-making power, imports a prohibition to the subjects, or citizens, of all commercial intercourse and correspondence with citizens or persons domiciled in the enemy country. ”

“ Upon this principle of public law, it is the established rule in all commercial nations that trading with the enemy, except under a government license, subjects the property to confiscation or to capture and condemnation. ”

“ Neither laches nor fraud can be imputed in such a case, and none of the reasons on which the statute is founded can possibly apply, as the disability to sue becomes absolute by the declaration of war, and is a conclusion of law. ”

“ Trading, which supposed the making of contracts and which also involves the necessity of intercourse and correspondence, is necessarily contradictory to a state of war, but there is no exigency in war which requires that belligerents should confiscate or annul the debts due by the citizens of the other contending party. ”

“ Demurrers were filed by the defendant to the replications, and the court gave judgment for the plaintiffs in the sum of nine thousand four hundred eighty-three dollars and twenty-six cents damages and costs suit, whereupon the defendant sued out this writ of error. Proclamation of blockade was made by the President on the nineteenth day of April, 1861, and on the thirteenth day of July in the same year, Congress passed a law authorizing the President to interdict all trade and intercourse between the inhabitants of the states in insurrection and the rest of the United States. ”

“ Hostilities once commenced, any attempt at trading on the part of the subjects of either state, unless by permission of the sovereign, is prohibited and becomes ipso facto a breach of the allegiance due to their respective sovereigns, as such is forbidden by the public law of the civilized world. ”

“ They proceed also upon the presumption that claims are extinguished whenever they are not litigated in the proper forum within the prescribed period, and they take away all solid ground of complaint, because they rest on the negligence or laches of the party himself. ”

“ Old decisions, made when the rule of law was that war annulled all debts between the subjects of the belligerents, are entitled to but little weight, even if it is safe to assume that they are correctly reported, of which, in respect to the leading case of Prideaux v. ”