of it were leveled, and in so far as such ships as the Alabama, etc., etc., are concerned), in the terms following:

"Rules A neutral government is bound: First-To use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equipping, within its jurisdiction, of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or carry on war against a power with which it is at peace, and also to use like diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of a vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, such vessel having been specially adapted in whole or part within such jurisdiction to warlike use.

66

Secondly. Not to permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as the base of naval operations against the other, for the purpose of the renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men.

"Thirdly. To exercise due diligence in its own ports and as to all persons within its jurisdiction to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations and duties.

*

and the high contracting parties agree

to observe these rules between themselves in future, and to bring them to the knowledge of other maritime powers, and to invite them to accede to them."

Imagine the consternation of the Oxford M. P. at all this, if he still holds fast his elaborately argued and authoritatively supported opinion!

Prof. Bernard's book is, in name, a "History;" but is really an argument as well as a history. It is an argument upon the history and the history of an argument. So he avows in his introduction: "Primarily a contribution to the history of international law," it is, also, "a general view of the conduct of the British government in relation to the war." Chapter XIV., on "The Alabama Claims," is a labored defense and protest of forty pages against those claims. He insists that there is no remedy for the injuries we suffered but “mutual forbearance, candor, moderation, and self-control; " that a proper allowance for injured American feeling can not "make unreasonable pretensions just; and it does not warrant or excuse the revival, after five years of profound peace, of complaints and demands which were unjust when originally urged during the strife and fever of the war." Writing seven years after "Historicus," he does not cite the same text-writers, but

evidently has them in mind, and frames his statements of rightful neutral trade as they do; and he takes pains to controvert in a note a later author, Signor Petro Esperson, Prof. Int. Law, Univ. Padua, who recently maintained that "England owes the full amount of the depredations caused by the Alabama, because, in effect, this vessel, although carrying a Confederate flag, was nothing but an English corsair." He gives the British and American positions all through, with comments intended to show that the former were always right and the latter always wrong. He states the general principles applicable to the case as follows:

"The law of nations as hitherto understood-or, if any one prefer the phrase, the understanding which has existed among nations as to their relative rights and duties-does not prohibit a neutral from supplying to a belligerent ship, whether of commerce or of war, as it does not prohibit the supply of ship-guns and ammunition, without which ships are harmless. How a vessel so supplied was built-where she was built-by whom, for whom, or on what terms she was built; how or on what terms she came iato the possession of the belligerent―are questions which, as between nations, are irrelevant and immaterial. Nor is the neutral government required to satisfy itself that she shall be carried by the belligerent into one of his own ports, nor to make sure that she shall not be armed with guns exported from the neutral country for that purpose. In all these transactions the neutral country serves only as a place from which engines of war are procured by a belligerent who stands in need of them, and does not serve as a place in or from which the war itself is carried on.

"The law of nations does, on the other hand, declare that a country in or from which hostilities are suffered to be carried on, forfeits its right to the character of a neutral. It makes it, therefore, the duty of the neutral government to prevent, by the use of such means as governments may reasonably be expected to have at their command, the despatch of hostile expeditions from its shores. If at the time of its departure there be the means of doing any act of war-if those means, or any of them, have been procured and put together in the neutral port-aud if there be the intention to use them (which may always be taken for granted when they are in the hands of the belligerent), the neutral port may be justly said to serve as a base or point of departure for a hostile expedition."

But all this he denies in the case of the Alabama and other ships. He denies that the intent of those furnishing vessels or armament was even constructively hostile; that anything else than positive legal proof of their destination is to be con

sidered; in reply to the position, that the neutrality laws of England are defective, that England has refused to cure known defects in them, and that to plead these defects as an excuse for not fulfilling international obligations, is a bad plea, he deems it pertinent to say that nations are not under obligation to have perfect laws! He cites the legal advice given the government against proceeding in the case of the Alabama, in its defense, while expressly admitting that "it was known to the British government, long before she sailed, that this vessel was apparently designed for war; and there was strong reason to suspect that she was intended for the Confederate service. Evidence on this latter point, that might have satisfied a jury, was in possession of the Commissioners of Customs at the earliest on the 22d of July, at the latest on the 23d;" and she did not sail till the 29th. This gentleman was in attendance upon the High Commission at Washington; we hope his future instructions at Oxford will be improved by the Treaty formed under his eye, which rules that any vessel which there is "reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or carry on war," is a hostile expedition; and holds the power which does not use "due diligence" (on "reasonable ground") to prevent her "fitting out, arming, or equipping within its jurisdiction," responsible; and authorizes the arbitrators on the American claims to "assume that Her Majesty's Government had undertaken to act upon the principles set forth in these rules," "at the time when the claims arose"! He sustains his government in repelling (in August, 1865,) the first proposition for an arbitration made through the Hon. Charles Francis Adams, American Minister at London, (in October, 1863,) "on the ground that there were but two questions which could be made the subject of a reference; first, whether the British Government had acted with due diligence; secondly, whether its legal advisers had correctly understood their own municipal law; and that neither of these could properly be submitted to a foreign arbiter, still less to a joint commission"; just such an arbitration as is now provided for (and by a joint commission) by which the first (if not both) of

these very questions must be considered. He quotes Jeff. Davis's assertion against us,—(going beyond even his proper object, to vindicate the conduct of Great Britain) — that "the Confederate Government purchased in Great Britain, a neutral country (and with strict observance both of the law of nations and the municipal law of Great Britain!) vessels which were subsequently armed and commissioned as vessels of war," etc., his object being, at least, to throw doubt upon the commission of wrongs which the High Commission, the Treaty, and the arbitration all assume were committed. He mentions the opinion of the Law Officers, "that the Alabama was liable to seizure for a breach of the Foreign Enlistment Act, though no arms had been put on board," and admits that it "appears more than possible that the report of the Law Officers might, with greater dispatch, have been obtained a day or two sooner than it actually was"; and yet pronounces the opinion that the Government was at fault and chargeable - which is the foundation for all the late and future proceedings - "rash and unreasonable." He contends that the violation of neutrality can and must take place neither before nor after the time a ship leaves neutral waters, but precisely at the time (punctum temporis); which is putting so fine a point upon it, that such a violation could probably never be detected and punished, and is exactly what the Treaty does not require to be proven before arbitrators! He rejects even the reasonable and moderate ground of some writers, that "a ship built for war, fully armed for war, equipped and provisioned for sea, may be produced as an article of commerce, and either sold to a belligerent in a neutral port, or sent abroad to a belligerent port for sale, without any violation of neutrality, provided she were not built or equipped to order or in pursuance of an understanding with the belligerent purchaser "; and quotes the letter of the Lairds and the opinion of Mr. Mellish, to show that the furnishing of the Alabama was innocent, though such an "understanding" is as plain as day, and, this proven, a an" ship much less than "fully armed" would come within the rules of the Treaty. He denies that dispatching the ship and

her armament separately for the purpose of being combined are parts of the same transaction, and has the hardihood to say, that "proof that both ship and armament were obtained in England, and that they were respectively transported to France or Portugal in order to be put together, is proof of a fact which is nothing at all to the purpose." He attempts to controvert the last editor of Wheaton, "an able writer," who says that "the intent covers all cases, and furnishes the test. It must be immaterial where the combination is to take place, whether here or elsewhere, if the acts done in our territory whether acts of building, fitting, arming, or of procuring materials for those acts be done as part of a plan by which a vessel is to be sent out with intent that she shall be employed to cruise" an opinion whose soundness, as opposed to the sophistries of the "Chichele Professor at Oxford," both in reason and in law, the plain terms of the first Rule of the Treaty abundantly vindicate.

President Woolsey's article in the "North American Review" takes the English side, with some qualifications which we shall quote fairly, which seem inconsistent with the drift of the paper. He pronounces the essays of "Historicus" "timely and serviceable to the cause of order," especially where they treat of the "recognition of revolting provinces." Professor Bernard, he says, "has performed a service for which the students in his science will be grateful; he has gone over the whole field of claims and questions to which our civil war gave birth." "In Mr. Bernard's exposition of the Alabama claims we find nothing to complain of; we meet here the same candor and truthfulness which is obvious throughout the work." This is in respect to statements of fact; but Prof. Bernard's opinions also pass almost entirely unchallenged. A distinction or two is indeed taken: e, g.: between an offense against common law or the Foreign Enlistment Act, in the building such a ship, and a wrong done to a neutral thereby. But

*Wheaton, Edited by Hon. R. H. Dana, Jr., p. 563, Note, § For fullness of matter Bernard deserves all praise; especially for his large extracts from State papers.