Neutrality Laws. mitted to be possessed by every government within its own limits, in virtue of its abso lute sovereignty be communicated to a ves sel navigating the high seas? It is supposed that it cannot be so communicated because the ocean being common to all nations, no absolute sovereignty can be acquired in it, the rights of all are equal, and must neces sarily check, limit and restrain each other. The superior right, therefore, of absolute sovereignty to protect all property within its own territory ceases to be superior when the property is no longer within its terri tory, and may be encountered by the op posing acknowledged right of a belligerent power to seize and confiscate the goods of his enemy. If the belligerent permits the neutral to attempt, without hazard to him self, thus to serve and aid his enemy, yet he does not relinquish the right of defeating that attempt, whenever it shall be in his power to defeat it. Thus it is admitted that an armed vessel may stop and search at sea a neutral bottom and may take out goods which are contraband of war, without giv ing cause of offence, or being supposed in any degree to infringe neutral rights. But this practice could not be permitted within the rivers, harbors, and other places of a neutral, where its sovereignty was complete. It follows then that the full right of afford ing protection to all property whatever, within its own territory, which is inherent in every government, is not transferred to a vessel navigating the high seas. The right of a belligerent over the goods of his enemy within his reach is as complete as his right over contraband of war; and it seems a position not easily to be refuted that a situa tion which will not protect the one should not protect the other. A neutral bottom then does not of right, in cases where no compact exists, protect from his enemy the goods of a belligerent power. "To this reasoning the practice of nations has conformed, and the common understand ing of mankind seems to have assented.
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Vattel B.3, Sect. I J5, says positively, " that effects belonging to an enemy found on board a neutral ship are seizable by the rights of war." Vattel is believed to be supported by the most approved writers on the same subject. It is deemed unnecessary to multiply citations to this point, because France herself, is supposed to have decided it. In her maritime ordinance of 1744, which is considered as having been in force in 1778, enemy goods in neutral bottoms generally are declared liable to seizure and confiscation. . . . This principle, thus ad mitted to have been established, is supposed by some to have been changed by the armed neutrality. A new law of nations, it is contended, was introduced by that con federation. But who were the parties to that federation and what was its object? The northern maritime powers of Europe united to protect by force in their own bot toms during the then existing war the goods of either and of all the belligerent powers. The compact in its own nature was confined with respect to its objects and duration. "It did not purpose to change nor could it change permanently and universally the rights of nations not becoming parties to it. . . . The desire of establishing univer sally the principle, that neutral bottoms shall make neutral goods, is perhaps felt by no nation on earth more strongly than by the United States. Perhaps no nation is more deeply interested in its establish ment. It is an object they keep in view and which, if now forced by violence to abandon it, they will pursue in such manner as their own judgment may dictate, as being best calculated to attain it. But the wish to establish a principle is essentially different from a determination that is already estab lished. The interests of the United States could not fail to produce the wish; their duty forbid them to indulge it, when decid ing on a mere right. However solicitous America might be to pursue all proper means tending to obtain for this principle
