Council instructed British cruisers to stop and detain all vessels that were laden, wholly or in part, with corn, flour, meal, and other articles of provisions, and that were bound to any port in France, and to send them into a British port in order that such corn and other provisions might be purchased on behalf of the British Government. The question of the legality of this Order was discussed before a mixed commission appointed, under the treaty of commerce and navigation between Great Britain and the United: States in 1794, to decide on the claims of American citizens owing to irregular or illegal captures and condemnations of their property under the authority of the British Government. The Order in Council was supported on two grounds, although it was subsequently revoked. Firstly, it was urged that the Order was issued when there was a prospect of reducing the enemy to terms by famine, and in such circumstances provisions bound to the enemy's ports became so far contraband as to justify seizure of them by Britain, upon condition of the invoice price being paid, with a reasonable mercantile profit added, together with freight and demurrage. Secondly, it was urged that the Order was justifiable on the plea of necessity, since the British people at the time were threatened with a scarcity of the articles directed to be seized. The general law of nations was invoked in favour of the first of these positions, and the chief evidence cited was a passage from Vattel, as follows:
'Commodities that are particularly useful in war and the importation of which to an enemy is prohibited, are called contraband goods. Such are arms, ammunition, timber for shipping and whatever is of service for the construction and armament of vessels of war, horses, and even provisions, in certain junctures, when there is a hope of reducing the enemy by famine.'[1]
- ↑ Book iii, ch. vii, § 12. Wheaton (History, 380–1) describes the passage as a 'loose' one, a 'vague text'. Wheaton shows the use to which Vattel
