TOPICS OF THE DAY.
COMMERCIAL HOSTILITIES.
Auruounit the debate on Mr. Collier's motion, this week, had no direct positive result, it was one of the most profitable dis- cussions of the session. It will greatly assist in enabling public men to define what can he done with reference to the trade of an enemy during war, and what cannot be done under the present circumstances of the world. It will assist also in rendering more intelligible the public law of Europe. Our readers are aware that that law consists, first, in the texts of wise lawyers who have spe- cially devoted themselves to the study, and who are accepted as guides to the courts of all civilized states ; and secondly, in the decisions of those courts. But as the application varies with local law, and as there is no constituted tribunal of appeal, while the body of the law has remained to a certain extent indeterminate, it has for the same reason been protected against the importation of the technicalities and trivial corruptions which so greatly dis- figure the statute and domestic laws of all lands. It is, as we have said before, the rule of common sense applied by the light of the wisest learned men who have studied the subject, and by the practice of the highest courts. It follows from this nature of the public law of the civilized world, that it must necessarily be sub- ject to revision in particular portions of it with the advancement of intelligence and with the altered circumstances of civilization. At a former period, when the commerce of the world was conveyed by paths comparatively narrow, when countries possessed a more distinctive character for their marine, and the external trade of any state was more easily defined, those attacks upon the pro- perty of the enemy were not complicated with the relations of neutral or even friendly states. At present there is no country whose trade is not almost inextricably entangled with that of al- most every other commercial state in the world. The path of commerce is the entire ocean and every continent that is netted with railways. It is proportionately more difficult to intercept the commerce of any one state ; and if the interception be effected, there is a greater risk of inflicting damage upon friends as well as enemies.
The nature of the public law, and the progress in its revision,
are excellently illustrated by the course of the belligerents at the present time. During the last war, this country sustained the principle that an enemy's goods might be seized wherever they are found. In the present war, that principle is abandoned, in favour of the rule maintained by America and several other states, that free bottoms make free goods. Whatever military grounds might favour our own former rule, it has been found necessary to surrender our individual views to the common opinion of the com- mercial world. But there is great reason to believe that the rea- sons which have swayed the commercial world are preponderating. It is a great point to damage the enemy wherever you can get at him. No civilization can render war anything but sanguinary coercion ; it only protracts and exasperates the cruel influence to employ it in a feeble manner : its blows should be sharp, quick, and effectual ; no plea for " sparing " the enemy, therefore, could militate against the search and confiscation of his goods wherever found. lint mixed as the trade of all countries now is, the goods of each are scattered over the marine of all. To discover these goods, it would be necessary that every neutral or friendly ship should be boarded ; that the voyage of those vessels should be arrested by a squadron of observation, with hinderances to a transit in which even an hour's delay entails commercial loss, with un- certainty, and with all the contraction of commerce that follow from delay and uncertainty. In order to discover whether or not a small damage could be inflicted upon Russia by confiscating a par- ticular cargo of hemp, perdu somewhere, the commerce of all neu- trals must be hindered and alarmed, and an enormous injury in- flicted upon the world and ourselves. The military gain is ob- tained at too large a cost. In replying to taunts the other night, that nothing had been done with our fleets in the Baltic or Black Sea, Lord Palmerston justly said, that the simple fact of shutting up the Russian
fleets, besides a moral humiliation and damage to the enemy, had saved us the incalculable cost that would have been inflicted upon us by invasion and by the ravaging of commerce throughout the sea. That is most true. It is the boast of the Allies during the present war, that they have shut up hostilities almost within the territory of Russia herself; have rendered her positively harmless for the trade of the world, and have forced the greatest amount of commercial damage upon the enemy alone, with a minimum of injury to other states. In glancing at the methods by which evasions of the blockade might be prevented, Mr. Collier almost confessed that the last plan would be the only successful plan— that of prohibiting the import of produce into this country. Mr. Cardwell's reply appears to us to be complete : you would then arrive exactly at the point where you would inflict injury upon traders of your own and friendly countries, without reaching Russia. Rus- sia already suffers severely, as Mr. Mitchell admitted, by the ad- ditional cost in the conveyance of goods which could not be charged upon the produce in the markets of the world, and by the loss of goods in transitu over a circuitous land route. But the slightest degree of manufacture converts the raw material of the enemy into the produce of a friend, and the difficulty of tracing the origin aids other complications in this inquisitorial pursuit of goods with an inimical origin. The moral of the debate, taken as a whole, ap- pears to be, that, when you are striking primarily and directly at
the territory or marine of the enemy, you are clearly in the right, both on grounds of public law and of military expediency; but that when, apart from the territory and marine of the enemy, you are searching for inimical goods, you become entangled in innumerable relations with neutrals and friendly states, and your own traders; and with a minimum of damage to the enemy you are inflicting a maximum of injury upon the commerce of the world. The lesson is, to encourage the tendency of modern times which limits hostilities to military operations, and discourages the oldfashioned plan of making commerce answerable for the misdeeds of one contributor to commerce. Shut up the enemy as much as you can ; damage him as much as you can, bodily; but protect commerce against his ravages, and leave to its highways the utmost amount of freedom.
There is no denying that the equivocal neutrality of Prussia complicates this question, by acting as a cover for Russian trade, and giving to the enemy a licence which is an innovation in the practices of war, and to a certain extent an unfairness to our own traders. Mr. Collier argues, and probably he would be supported by publicists, that Prussia has no right to foster this transit trade, since it is that species of new trade which a neutral is not permit. ted to create ; because it is always presumed, in such cases, that the new trade is only a covered form of the enemy's trade—that the neutral lends itself as a blind—that, in short, the case is just what it now is with Prussia. Technically and on the esta- blished principles of the courts, we believe that Mr. Collier is right ; but if the case were made out on that point, it would, we think, only establish the necessity for that revision which we started with admitting. To enforce the old rule, would be quite counter to the modern rule of concentrating your hostilities as much as possible upon the enemy and leaving commerce free. But Prussia is not answerable to the civil courts, and there are other modes of making her know her responsibilities. It is not a ques- tion for the President of the Board of Trade, or the Judge of the Admiralty Court. It is a subject of foreign policy for the consi- deration of the Cabinet. If on commercial grounds it would be shown that Prussia, under the guise of a neutral, is subserving the enemy to such a degree as to be saving him from injury, increas- ing his means, and doing the good offices of an ally, she is con- victed, ipso facto, of being an enemy to the enemies of Russia; and the true resort against that ,unfair behaviour of a state is, to call upon her to abandon her fraudulent neutrality, and either to assist the Allies in blockading that part of Russian territory which is conterminous with herself, or, by avowing an alliance with the enemy, to render herself amenable to the same blockade upon her own frontiers. Here again, without pursuing commerce, we get the desired object, by military means directed solely and bodily upon the territories and marine of an enemy; Prussia being treated upon the premises according to her true character.
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