In the case of The Peterhoff, in 1866, the Supreme Court of the United States said as to blockade:

We must say, therefore, that trade, between London and Matamoras, even with intent to supply, from Matamoras, goods to Texas, violated no blockade, and can not be declared unlawful.

Trade with a neutral port in immediate proximity to the territory of one belligerent, is certainly very inconvenient to the other. Such trade, with unrestricted inland commerce between such a port and the enemy's territory, impairs undoubtedly and very seriously impairs the value of a blockade of the enemy's coast. But in cases such as that now in judgment, we administer the public law of nations, and are not at liberty to inquire what is for the particular advantage or disadvantage of our own or another country. We must follow the lights of reason and the lessons of the masters of international jurisprudence. (5 Wall. 28.) In the same case reference was made to the contraband on board.

And contraband merchandise is subject to a different rule in respect to ulterior destination than that which applies to merchandise not contraband. The latter is liable to capture only when a violation of blockade is intended; the former when destined to the hostile country, or to the actual military or naval use of the enemy, whether blockaded or not. The trade of neutrals with belligerents in articles not contraband is absolutely free, unless interrupted by blockade; the conveyance by neutrals to belligerents of contraband articles is always unlawful, and such articles may always be seized during transit by sea. Hence, while articles, not contraband, might be sent to Matamoras and beyond to the rebel region, where the communications were not interrupted by blockade, articles of a contraband character, destined in fact to a State in rebellion, or for the use of the rebel military forces, were liable to capture, though primarily destined to Matamoras

The Springbok.-Much difference of opinion was called forth by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1866 by which the cargo of the Springbok, a vessel which had sailed from London to Nassau, was condemned, though the vessel was seized when sailing between two neutral ports. The vessel itself was released. In this case the court said:

Upon the whole case we can not doubt that the cargo was originally shipped with the intent to violate the blockade; that

the owners of the cargo intended that it should be transshipped at Nassau into some vessel more likely to succeed in reaching a blockaded port than the Springbok; that the voyage from London to the blockaded port was, as to the cargo, both in law and in intent of the parties, one voyage; and that the liability to condemnation, if captured during any part of the voyage, attached to the cargo from the time of sailing. (5 Wall. 1.)

Writing after but speaking of the period just before the American Civil War, Sir Travers Twiss, agreeing with the law officers of the Crown, as to the case of the Springbok, said:

Great Britain and the United States of America had until then been content to enforce against neutral merchants the confiscation of their property upon proof of some constructive attempt on their part to violate a blockade; it has remained for the younger sister, under her extraordinary difficulties, to initiate the doctrine of a prospective intention, on the part of a neutral merchant, to violate a blockade, and to subject him to the confiscation of his property not upon the evidence of any present voyage of the ship and cargo, in which the ship and cargo have been intercepted, but upon the presumption of a future voyage of the cargo alone to a blockaded port, after it had been landed from the ship at a neutral port. (Continuous Voyage, 3 Law Mag. and Rev. 4th series, p. 1.)

Many British authorities, as well as many continental writers, regarded the decision in the case of the Spring bok as unsound.

A formal statement in 1882, with the names of such distinguished members of the Institute of International Law as Arntz, Asser, Bulmerincq, Gessner, Hall, De Martens, Pierantoni, Renault, Rollin, Travers Twiss, declared the Springbok decision

subversive of an established rule of maritime warfare. *

that it is extremely desirable that the Government of the United States of America, which has been on several occasions the zealous promoter of important amendments of the rules of maritime warfare, in the interests of neutrals, should take an early opportunity of declaring in such form as it may see fit, that it does not intend to incorporate the above propounded theory into its system of maritime prize law and that the condemnation of 88941-28-2

the cargo of the Springbok shall not be adopted as a precedent by its prize courts.

Such a declaration was never made by the United States.

The Institute of International Law.-The Institute of International Law in 1882 included in the Regulations Concerning Prizes, article 44, a provision that: “In no case can the doctrine of continuous voyage justify condemnation for violation of blockade."

In 1896, however, the Institute said of contraband:

Destination for the enemy is presumed when the shipment goes to one of the enemy's ports, or even to a neutral port which, from clear evidence or undeniable fact, is only a temporary stopping place in a commercial transaction having an enemy end. (Annuaire 1896, p. 231.)

Hall's opinion.-Hall, the English authority, writing of the American extension of the doctrine of continuous voyage, said in 1884 in a note to the second edition of his International Law:

During the American Civil War the courts of the United States gave a violent extension to the notion of contraband destination, borrowing for the purpose the name of a doctrine of the English courts, of wholly different nature from that by which they were themselves guided. As has already been stated (§ 234) it was formerly held that neutrals in a sense aided in the hostilities of a belligerent by taking advantage of permission given by him to carry on a trade which was forbidden to them in time of peace. Property engaged to such trade was therefore deemed to be confiscable. During the Anglo-French wars of the revolution traders foreign to France or Spain were permitted to trade between French and Spanish ports and French and Spanish colonies, commerce with the colonies in question having before the war been restricted to trade with foreign ports and the colony. To evade the liability to condemnation in the English courts which entering into the new trade involved, neutral merchants endeavoured to give an air of innocence to their ventures by making a colourable importation into some port from which trade with the colony or the home country was permissible. Thus in the case of the William, (5 Rob. 385), a cargo taken on board at La Guayra was brought to Marblehead in Massachusetts, it was landed, reembarked in the same vessel with the addition of some sugar from

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the Havannah, and within a week of its arrival was despatched to Bilboa. In this and in like cases the English courts condemned the property; but they were careful not to condemn until what they conceived to be the hostile act was irrevocably entered upon; cargo was confiscated only when captured on its voyage from the port of colourable importation to the enemy country. The doctrine upon which the English courts acted was called by Lord Stowell the doctrine of continuous voyage.

By the American courts during the Civil War the idea of continuous voyage was seized upon, and was applied to cases of contraband and blockade. Vessels were captured while on their voyage from one neutral port to another, and were then condemned as carriers of contraband or for intent to break blockade. They were thus condemned, not for an act-for the act done was in itself innocent, and no previous act existed with which it could be connected so as to form a noxious whole-but on mere suspicion of intention to do an act. Between the grounds upon which these and the English cases were decided there was of course no analogy.

The American decisions have been universa ly reprobated outside the United States, and would probably now find no defenders in their own country. On the confession indeed of one of the judges then sitting in the Supreme Court, they seem to have been due partly to passion and partly to ignorance. "The truth is," says Mr. Justice Nelson, "that the feeling of the country was deep and strong against England, and the judges, as individual citizens, were no exceptions to that feeling. Besides, the court was not then familiar with the law of blockade" (p. 624, n. 1).

The editor of the eighth edition of Hall, 1924, says of Hall's early position:

This statement is not supported by the current American writers on international law.

South African War.-The doctrine of continuous voyage was put to the test through the shipment of goods on a German vessel, the Bundesrath, to a Portuguese port near the South African Republic, during the South African War in 1900. A British cruiser captured the Bundesrath. The German ambassador protested, saying in a note of January 4, 1900:

With reference to the seizure of the German steamer Bundesrath by an English ship of war, I have the honour to inform your excellency, in accordance with instructions received, that the

Imperial Government, after carefully examining the matter and considering the judicial aspects of the case, are of opinion that proceedings before a prize court are not justified.

This view is grounded on the consideration that proceedings before a prize court are only justified in cases where the presence of contraband of war is proved, and that, whatever may have been on board the Bundesrath, there could have been no contraband of war, since, according to recognized principles of international law, there can not be contraband of war in trade between neutral ports.

This is the view taken by the British Government in 1863 in the case of the seizure of the Springbok as against the judgment of the American prize court, and this view is also taken by the British Admiralty in their Manual of Naval Prize Law of 1866.

The Imperial Government are of opinion that, in view of the passages in that manual: "A vessel's destination should be considered neutral if both the port to which she is bound and every intermediate port at which she is to call in the course of her voyage be neutral," and "the destination of the vessel is conclusive as to the destination of the goods on board," they are fully justified in claiming the release of the Bundesrath without investigation by a prize court, and that all the more because, since the ship is a mail steamer with a fixed itinerary, she could not discharge her cargo at any other port than the neutral port of destination. (Parliamentary Papers, Africa No. 1, 1900, Cd. 33, p. 6.)

On the same date Lord Salisbury informed the British ambassador at Berlin that he was

entirely unable to accede to his (the German ambassador's) contention that a neutral vessel was entitled to convey without hindrance contraband of war to the enemy, so long as the port at which he intended to land it was a neutral port. (Ibid. p. 7, No. 18.)

On January 10, 1900, Lord Salisbury wrote:

It is not the case that the British Government in 1863 raised any claim or contention against the judgment of the United States prize court in the case of the Springbok. On the first seizure of that vessel, and on an ex parte and imperfect statement of the facts by the owners, Earl Russel, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, informed Her Majesty's minister at Washington that there did not appear to be any justification for the seizure of the vessel and her cargo, that the supposed reason, namely, that there were articles in the manifest not accounted for by the captain, certainly did not warrant the seizure, more especially as