INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. i 
in the late war. The results of the decisions of 
the Prize Courts of all the belligerents, as shown by 
Dr. Colombos, afford evidence of the truth of this 
proposition. But as regards our own Prize Court, the 
distinction was never abandoned, and still remains, so 
far as British Prize Law is concerned. The conditions 
of the late war may not be repeated, and the abandon- 
ment of the distinction might well have an unfortunate 
reaction in other departments of the laws of war. The 
Declaration of Paris, 1856, deprived a belligerent of a 
right, which he had exercised for centuries, of seizing 
enemy property on neutral vessels; the justifiably 
extended lists of Contraband seriously limited the opera- 
tion of this provision. The first application of the 
doctrine of Continuous Voyage to Contraband by 
British Prize Courts was in the case of The Kim. 
In so acting they were following the precedents 
set by the Prize Courts of the United States during 
the Civil War; there were also previous French and 
Italian decisions to the like effect. The details of 
the application of this doctrine, and the wide extension 
of the idea of Contraband can be fully appreciated from 
the pages dealing with these topics. They show a logical 
development from existing principles of Prize Law, 
warranted by the circumstances of the war, though 
Dr. Colombos suggests that in some cases the develop- 
ment was unduly extended. The Prize Courts, both 
of Great Britain and of the other belligerent States, 
extended the doctrine of Continuous Voyage beyond the 
application which it had hitherto received. But this 
extension was in conformity with the line of develop- 
ment of the law. The decisions of the Prize Courts of 
the United States during the Civil War marked an 
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