§ 188. Former practice in regard to neutral trade. § 189. Historical illustrations. § 190. Declaration attached to the Peace of Paris in 1856. § 191. Opinions of publicists. § 194. What goods are contraband in the usage of nations. § 195. Results as to deciding what articles are contraband. Occasional con- § 196. Is it just and sanctioned by usage. Opinions in respect to it. § 197. Preemption. English practice in cases of preemption. § 198. Penalty for contraband at sea. Treaty modifying the penalty. § 199. Neutrals carrying the enemy's despatches. Case of the Trent. § 200. Trade closed in peace but open in war. $201. The same subject continued. § 202. Blockade. What places can be blockaded? § 203. Evidence of a blockade. What is due notice? What is a discontinu- § 204. French and English practice as to notification. § 205. Penalty for breach of blockade. Duration of liability to penalty. § 206. Attempts to stretch the rules of blockades. Berlin decree. Orders in § 208. The right of search. Its narrow limits. Duty of submitting to it. Treaties often regulate the right. § 209. Is there a right of convoy? Historical illustrations. $ 210. Its justice considered. § 211. Neutrals under belligerent convoy. § 214. Search of vessels on the high sea suspected of hostile designs. Case of § 215. Search of foreign vessels suspected of being slavers, unauthorized. § 216. But conceded by treaties between most of the European states. § 217. Obligations of the United States in regard to the slave-trade. Resolu- tions of Congress, February 28, 1823. Negotiations in England, and Convention of 1824, amended by the Senate of the United States, § 218. Treaty of Washington in 1842. Practice under the treaty. § 219. What does the right of search mean? Doctrine held by the United States. New discussion concerning the right in 1858, 1859. New ar- rangements with Great Britain in 1862. § 220. Nationality of vessels a legitimate matter for inquiry in peace. § 221. Right of search for her seamen, claimed by Great Britain. § 224. Peaceful ways of preventing or ending strife between nations. § 225. Plans for standing public arbitration. § 226. Projects for perpetual peace, as those of Henry IV., St. Pierre, Kant, Bentham. Ladd's essay. Petition of a peace society to the House of § 227. Compromissory arbitration. § 228. Sanctions of international law. § 230. Its prospects for the future. § 231. Importance of the study of this science. b INTERNATIONAL LAW. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. DEFINITION, GROWTH, JURAL AND MORAL GROUNDS, SOURCES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. § 1. In order to protect the individual members of human society from one another, and to make just society possible, the Creator of man has implanted in his nature certain conceptions which we call rights, to which in every case obligations correspond. These are the foundation of the system of justice, and the ultimate standard with which laws are compared, to ascertain whether they are just or unjust. They involve, amid all the inequalities of condition, a substantial equality of the members of society before the tribunal of law and justice, because the physical, intellectual, and moral natures of all imply the same capacity and destination, and because to the capacity and destination of man his rights or powers of free action must correspond. On this basis within the state, and often without any direct coöperation of its members, a system of law grows up, which, while it may be imperfect, approaches, with the progress of the society in knowledge and moral cultivation, to the standard of perfect justice. And even the moral progress of society, the ability of its members to acknowledge their reciprocal claims and discharge their duties to each other, to fulfill their part in that moral sphere which lies in great measure quite beyond the reach of positive law, this also is dependent to a great degree upon their correct estimate of rights and obligations. § 2. Nations or organized communities of men differ from the individual men of a state, in that they are self-governed, that no law is imposed on them by any external human power, while yet they retain the moral accountable nature, which must govern the members of a single society. They cannot have intercourse with one another without feeling that each party has rights and obligations. They have, as states, a common nature and destination, whence an equality of rights arises. And hence proceeds the possibility of a law between nations which is just, as expressing reciprocal rights and obligations, or just, as expressing a free waiver of the rights which are by all acknowledged; and which may also embody by mutual agreement rules, defining their more obvious claims and duties, or aiming to secure their common convenience and welfare. (Comp. § 27.) This law of intercourse between nations has been united with political law, or the doctrine concerning the constitution of the state and the relations of the government to the people, under the head of public law, as opposed to private, or to the system of laws within the state, by which the relations of its individual members are defined and protected.1 And yet there is a branch of this law which has both a private and a public character,—private as relating to persons, and public as agreed upon between nations. This law, or system of relations between states, is now extensively called international law. International law § 3. International law, in a wide and abstract sense, would embrace those rules of intercourse between nations which are deduced from their rights and moral claims; or, in other words, it is the expression of the jural and moral relations of states to one another. in the widest sense. 1 Comp. Klüber, § 2, and for the next remark Hurd's Law of Freedom and Bondage, § 25. The Germans excel us in the neatness of their divisions of jural science, e. g., öffentliches Recht is divided into Staatsrecht and Völkerrecht. |