THE WAR AND FLUCTUATIONS IN MARITIME INTERCOURSE 671 
She insisted that neutral vessels should be allowed to trade AD, 11% 
freely from port to port on the coasts of nations at war, and 
that all goods belonging to the subjects of belligerent Powers 
should be free in neutral ships. These principles made it to the dis. 
impossible for a belligerent to cut off the commerce of an ofthe 
enemy, and they were favourable to the Americans, since their 294k: 
trade could go on unchecked. This doctrine was also advan- 
tageous to the smaller maritime Powers, which could claim a 
right to continue and develop a carrying trade, when England 
was hampered by hostilities. Sweden and Denmark immedi- 
ately adopted the same policy as Russia, and Austria, Portugal 
and the Two Sicilies also joined the Armed Neutrality, 
These Powers refused to recognise any blockade which was 
not rendered effective, and thus the different questions, which 
that which Vattel laid down when he maintained that ‘the effects belonging to an 
enemy found on board a neutral ship are seizable by the rights of war’ (Drovts des 
Gens, book mmr. § 115). * * * The right of a belligerent to confiscate all goods 
belonging to an enemy found on neutral vessels had been fully recognised in the 
Consolato del Mare, which chiefly regulated the maritime law of the Middle Ages. 
It appears then to have been undisputed, and it is not too much to say that it had 
been asserted and acted on in more modern times by every considerable naval 
Power. An ordinance of Lewis XIV., indeed, in 1681, went much beyond the 
English doctrine, and asserted, in accordance with what is said to have been the 
earlier French practice, the right of a belligerent to confiscate any neutral vessel 
containing an enemy's goods ; and this was the received French doctrine for the 
next sixty-three years, and the received Spanish doctrine for a considerably 
longer period. In 1744, however, a new French ordinance adopted the English 
rule that the goods, but the goods only, were liable to confiscation. Holland, in 
her practice and her professions, had hitherto agreed with England, and the right 
of a belligerent to confiscate an enemy's property in neutral ships was clearly laid 
down in the beginning of the eighteenth century by Bynkershoek, the chief 
Dutch authority on maritime law. Russia herself, during her late war with 
the Turks, had systematically confiscated Turkish property in neutral vessels 
(Malmesbury, Diaries, 1. 806, 807). The importance, indeed, to any great naval 
power of stopping the commerce of its enemy, and preventing the influx of 
indispensable stores into its ports, was so manifest, that it is not surprising that it 
should have been insisted on; and it is equally nataral that nentral Powers which 
had little or no prospect of obtaining any naval ascendancy, should have disliked 
it, and should have greatly coveted the opportunity which a war might give them 
of carrying on in their own ships the trade of the belligerents. The doctrine that 
free ships make free goods appears to have been first put forward in 2 Prussian 
memorial in 1752, at & time when Prussian merchantmen had begun, on some 
considerable scale, to carry on trade for the Powers which were then at war; but 
it never received any sanction from the great maritime Powers till France, with 
the object of injuring England, adopted it in 1778. The accession of Russia in 
1780 at once gave it an almost general authority.” Lecky, op. cit. Iv. 156. 
1 Koch and Schoell, 1. 477. 479.