Yesterday week Sir John Lubbock moved a general resolution in
relation to the unsatisfactory state of maritime law in relation to the rights of belligerents, for the purpose of raising a discussion on the point for which the United States has always contended, —that the Declarations of Paris made by the Powers of Europe in 1856 are inadequate without their extension to include the principle that all private property at sea should be exempt from capture, except so far as the right of blockade, and the right to stop contraband of war, are concerned. The Declarations of Paris, as is well known, prohibited privateering, and laid down that neutral goods should be exempt from capture in enemies' ships, and that enemies' goods should be in like manner exempt from capture in neutral ships. Sir John Lubbock argued that useful as these concessions to the interests of commerce are, they ought to be extended to the exemption of all private property at sea, in genuine traders, whether under an enemy's flag or not, from capture, and that such an extension, while it would make a very- slight further inroad on the warlike powers of belligerents, would prevent an immense and most undesirable disturbance of the commercial arrangements of the world. The carrying trade of England, for instance, extends to 9,170,000 tons, out of the 21,000,000 tons which cover the commercial marine of the world, and is greater than that of Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Holland, Spain, Norway and Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Greece, and Turkey, all put together, and yet all this mighty commercial marine might either have to be transferred to a foreign flag in case of our going to war,•or might be liable to the greatest losses from the attacks of some puny naval Power far inferior to our own. Sir John also,—not very judiciously, we think,—argued for a further limitation of the right of blockade, contending that in these days, if any country's ports were closed, that country has but to send its goods by rail to the ports of another country to be shipped under a neutral flag ; and that this being so, the right of blockade does not mean at all the important right which it once did.
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