several campaigns ; and, being distinguished by informa tion, wit, attractive manners, and never-failing affability, he enjoyed, heartless as he was, a wonderful popularity. But this very popularity, together with a sneer he had incautiously uttered against the king, caused his banish ment to Chantilly. In 1697 he was elected king of Poland, but on reaching that country he found the throne in the possession of the elector of Saxony, and at once retired without making any attempt to dispossess his rival. (See the Memoires de Saint-Simon, and Desormeaux, Histoire de la Jfaison de Bourbon.} Louis Francois, prince of Conti (1717-1776), the grandson of Frangois, was a brave and popular general. He was engaged in the war caused by the claims of Maria Theresa to the imperial throne ; he commanded the army which crossed the Alps into Italy and defeated the Sardinians in 1744 ; and he also served in Germany and Flanders in 1745 and 1746. Not, how ever, being allowed to take part in the Seven Years War, he supported the Parliament of Paris against the court, and earned the nickname of "the Advocate." His son was the
last of the house of Conti.according to Ducange, "merces banno interdicta," and was originally applied to a prohibited domestic trade in time of peace, such as that in salt. The term does not occur in the Guidon de la Mer, or in Grotius, and is first used to denote a prohibited neutral trade with a belligerent in the Treaty of Southampton (17th September 1625) between Charles I. and the States-General of Holland. That treaty declared that all provisions (munitions de bouche), provisions of war, ships, arms, sails, &c., silver, iron, &c., carried to Spanish ports, would along with the carrier ships and their crews be good prize. It was partly from the general use of such treaty-stipulations with neutrals, and partly from the custom of belligerents at the beginning of a war to issue declarations which they formally intimated to neutrals, and which forbade all trade in certain articles with the ports of their enemies, that the international law of contra band grew up. An example of the latter mode of procoad- ing is the "Placaart" issued in 1599 by the States-General, which, like the Berlin Decrees, completely interdicted all trade with Spain. The Treaty of Southampton itself was followed by two proclamations, which assume a belligerent right to place restrictions on neutral commerce, and which go the length of authorizing private ships to capture neutral bottoms carrying contraband. The practice of contraband is of course much older than the name. Thus in the Code of Justinian (iv. 41, 42) Marcian prohibits the sale to barbari alienigence of oil, wine, several specified kinds of arms, and generally of iron. So also the Decretals, Gregery IX. (v. 6-12), and the Bull " In Ccena Domini," c. 7, denounced excommunication against such as should supply Saracens with arms. It is in the 17th century thai; the military policy and commercial interests of the various European nations begin to be indicated in their treaties relating to contraband. Opinion varied so much with the political situation, that it is difficult to extract from these treaties the prevailing custom even of a single nation. At first provisions, that is corn, &c., seem generally to have been excluded from the list, and in 1674 a great English lawyer, Sir Leoline Jenkins, told Charles II. that nothing ought to be deemed contraband " but what is directly and immediately subservient to the use of war, excspt it be in the case of besieged places" (which raises the distinct ques tion of blockade), or of a " general certification by Spain to all the world." The definition of the French Ordonnance de la Marine of 1681 is also limited to muni tions of war, and even to such as have " la forme d un instrument pouvant servir directement a 1 usage de la guerre." On the other hand ; the early writers on contra band, such as Dr Zouch (De Jure Fetiall, 1634) and Albericus Gentilis (Advocationes Hispanicw}, in discussing the question " An res amicorum ad hostes transeuntes in- tercipere liceat ] " seem to assume that the belligerent has, apart from treaty, a right indefinitely to vary the list of articles constituting munitions of war, and it is clear that the test of " immediate subserviency " must vary with the character of the hostilities, the resources of the combatants, and the actual position of the conflict. In 1 543 the English envoy, Sadler, challenged the Scotch fish trade to France as a species of " aid," a word often used in the older treaties of alliance, but which can scarcely have been intended to cover the case of habitual trade ; and in 1589 Queen Elizabeth successfully justified the capture of a fleet of sixty vessels, belonging to the Hanse confederation, and carrying corn and naval munitions to Spain.[1] In all these cases some ordinance, placaart, or treaty vas appealed to, but these documents were of course liable to ex post facto interpretation, and such interpretations were acquiesced in from necessity or from motives of policy. A powerful neutral, dissatisfied with the decision of the captor s prize court, might issue letters of reprisal. This was done by England when a cargo of tobacco, bound for Holland, was condemned in Spain on the ground that by its use " the consumption of victuals might be prolonged." The general principle, before the writings of Grotius permanently afi ected the public law of Europe, was, therefore, that the private right of neutral merchants to free trads must yield to the public right of the belligerent to put such limits on neutral trade as were reasonably necessary in the conduct of war, that right being exercised in a public and legal manner. After the Peace of Westphalia, the grci.d pensionary of Holland, John de Witt, contended strongly for the exten sion of neutral rights, and in 1662 by treaty with France the Dutch adopted the definition of contraband in the 12th and 13th articles of the Treaty of the Pyrenees between France and Spain (1659), which included munitions of war, and specially excluded almost everything in the nature of ordinary provisions. For some time England maintained (as in her Treaty of Whitehall with Sweden, 1661) the doctrine that money, ships, and provisions were to be deemed contraband, but in her Treaty of Breda with Holland (1667), and her Treaty of St Germain-cn-Iaye with France (1677), she practically adopted the rule of the Pyrenees, with this extension, that the neutral trade might take place even between two enemy ports, provided neither was blockaded. This explains the singular agreement made by England and Holland in 1689 for a wholesale blockade of the ports, harbours, and roadsteads of France. The treaties of the 18th century proceeded for the most part on the Treaty of Utrecht, " which embodied the French doctrine of contraband " (Hall, Rights and Duties of Neutrals, 1874). As, however, some powers never contracted with each other on the subject, and as the treaties made were for limited periods, and were often broken by the outbreak of war, there was plenty of room for controversy and for the enforcement of national opinions. The classical division of contraband by Grotius was as follows : " Sunt res qute in bello tantum usum habent, ut anna ; sunt qu3 in bello nullum habent usum, ut quee voluptati inserviunt ; sunt quae et in bello et extra bellum usum habent, ut pecunia?, commeatus, naves, et quse navibus adsunt." The only difficulty arises in connection with the third class, of which Grotius says that the state of the war must be considered, and that " if seizure is necessary for defence, the necessity co ifers a right of arresting the goods " (De Jure Belli et Pads, iii. 1. 5). A leading question in the 18th century
was whether naval stores should be deemed contraband, the
- ↑ Continental jurists called this an attempt to starve Spain out.
