ENQUIRY INTO THE NEUTRALITY LAWS.
WE believe that Lord Malmesbury's neutrality proclamation, Irowever well intended, is what they call a brutum fulmen,—a thunderbolt, calculated more to alarm than to enforce ; and our merchants will be tolerably safe if they pay to it no attention at all. It is rather lodged for the benefit of the Executive —in- tended perhaps as a record to exonerate the officials from &king any steps on behalf of British subjects should either of the belli- gerents capture our ships or goods and confiscate them in a foreign prize court. Nevertheless the law is in a certain degree of con- fusion,—quite enough so to inconvenience our commercial body by ,obstruction, or the fear of obstruction ; and enough also to ereate ulterior confusion should no steps be taken pretty soon to make the path clearer. Already it has been publicly reported by the, Tinier, that the Executive has given such warnings to vessels loading certain cargoes that the process was neccessarily discon- tinued, with this further effect, that contracts which had been taken up were declared null and void. Now this is a species of interference which is quite as bad to the commercial man as the capture of his ship at sea. It introduces into the proceedings of
'commerce an endless addition of uncertainty.
The care is the worse, not simply because the official authori- ties decline to state what is the law,—what goods for examples are contraband of war,—but also because the law itself is in the greatest state of uncertainty. The neutrality Proclamation makes two distinct references to British law : it refers to one statute— the Foreign Enlistment Act of George III, whose object was to prevent British subjects from actually enlisting in foreign service ; and it refers to certain ancient privileges, all of which it says our officials are prepared to vindicate. Now these are references which only serve to confuse, since' as we have already said, the Single statute is not enough to tell us what is British law. The ancient privileges are incompatible with more recent enactments of our Government, and the whole tenour of the Proclamation is simply impracticable in the present state of commerce. We have ourselves gradually, and half tacitly, so altered the law as to
i leave it n confusion. After the reciprocally injurious war with the United States in 1812, we have given up the right of search at least during peace. In 1854 the British Government issued Orders in Council which, during the Russian War, abandoned the right to search for an enemy's goods in neutral ships—a con- cession technically made in a temporary form, but impossible to renew even in a partial war like that of the Crimea, and how much more so in a general war like that with which we are threa- tened! In 1856 the British Plenipotentiary at Paris, Lord Cla- rendon, in the name of our Executive agreed to that declaration Which affirmed four proposals—that pnvateering should be abo- lished, that blockades should be effectual or null, that an enemy's goods should be respected in neutral bottoms, and that neutral goods should be respected in an enemy's bottoms. In the Rua, sian War we were belligerents ; we are not so now, and yet the tendency of the recent declaration is to place our commerce in a worse position than it was during the Russian War :—
" Now, the position of England," says the Morning Post, "in the pre- sent war is precisely the same as that which the United States occupied during the Russian war. England and France, without hesitation, took up American vessels for the transport of military stores to the Crimea, and our enterprising Transatlantic brethren thereout reaped no small advantage, because they knew that the Russian fleets were locked up at Cronstadt and Sebastopol, and were practically as unavailable for aggression as the small navy of Austria, which, it appears, cannot protect even the commercial steam-boats belonging to the Lloyd's Company of Trieste. The Americans having full confidence in the power of their Government, and desirous to maintain national neutrality, are nevertheless willing to accept that enor- mous and valuable carrying trade which Lord Derby's Government has thrown into their hands. English shipowners are told that they must either charter American bottoms, or must register their vessels under the American flag." The effects of this situation are not theoretical. We have, of all English Journals, certainly the least jealousy of American pro- gress, but we desire equal chances for English commerce ; and our political as well as commercial readers will appreciate the fact, when we state that while merchants in this country are preferring American ships for the conveyance of their goods even English shipowners are casting about to discover some mode by which they may establish such an ownership as would secure them to quote the phrase of the Post, a better protection under the Biers and stripes than the Union Jack.
The law, we say, is materially altered since the last great war in 1815. Not only have there been the enactments to which we have already referred, which make great holes in the body of in- ternational law ; but public law takes its rise from fact, common sense and the recognized opinion of states elements which have entirely altered during the interval of forty-four years. As to facts, we have now many great marines' each vastly exceeding that which this country could place upon the waters in 1815, even though our ships .were but as cook boats to what they are now. Steam has been introduced with the complements of railroads by land, and free-trade ; and whereas our exports in 1815 were 32,000,000/., they now stand regularly above 100,000,0001. 'Uncertainty is the great bane of commerce, and those public men who desire to afford our commerce every facility,—that is all British statesmen without distinction of party,—must wish to remove this worst uncertainty—the uncertainty of our rights and liabilities. Again we insist, therefore, that steps effectual and prompt, should be taken for ascertaining what are our rights and liabili- ties. What is "contraband of war " ? What is the common sense of warlike claims as against the rights and claims of com- merce at the present day ? We care not who makes the inquiry, be it the House of Commons, be it a commission issued on the ad.- vice of Lord Derby or Lord Palmerston, be it initiated by the Op- position or the Ministry ; but that inquiry we say, ought to be had, and promptly, unless our public men neglect their clay.
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