in for adjudication on account of having such passengers on board. (2) If there had been hostile despatches found on board, the ship might have been captured and taken into port; and when it had entered our waters, these four men, being citizens charged with treason, were amenable to our laws. But there appears to have been no valid pretext for seizing the vessel. It is simply absurd to say that these men were living despatches. (3) The character of the vessel as a packet ship, conveying mails and passengers from one neutral port to another, almost precluded the possibility of guilt. Even if hostile military persons had been found on board, it might be a question whether their presence would involve the ship in guilt, as they were going from a neutral country and to a neutral country. (4) It ill became the United States a nation which had ever insisted strenuously upon neutral rights-to take a step more like the former British practice of extracting seamen out of neutral vessels upon the high seas, than like any modern precedent in the conduct of civilized nations, and that, too, when she had protested against this procedure on the part of Great Britain and made it a ground of war. As for the rest, this affair of the Trent has been of use to the world, by committing Great Britain to the side of neutral rights upon the seas." Woolsey, Int. Law § 199. "88. A commander should detain any neutral vessel which is being actually used as a transport for the carriage of soldiers or sailors by the enemy. 66 89. The vessel should be detained, although she may have on board only a small number of enemy officers; or even of civil officials sent out on the public service of the enemy, and at the public expense. "90. The carriage of ambassadors from the enemy to a neutral state, or from a neutral state to the enemy, is not forbidden to a neutral vessel, for the detention of which such carriage is therefore no cause. 91. It will be no excuse for carrying enemy military persons that the master is ignorant of their character. "92. It will be no excuse that he was compelled to carry such persons by duress of the enemy. “93. A vessel which carries enemy military persons becomes liable to detention from the moment of quitting port with the persons on board, and continues to be so liable until she has deposited them. After depositing them the vessel ceases to be liable. "94. The commander will not be justified in taking out of a vessel any enemy persons he may have found on board, and then allowing the vessel to proceed; his duty is to detain the vessel and send her in for adjudication, together with the persons on board. "95. The penalty for carrying enemy military persons is the confiscation of the vessel and of such part of the cargo as belongs to her owner. Holland's Manual of Naval Prize Law, 25-26. Under paragraph 88, the learned editor cites Carolina, 4 C. Rob. 256; 4. Diplomatic agents. § 1285. VII. OBSTRUCTION OF NAVIGABLE CHANNELS. $ 1286. I. A BELLIGERENT RIGHT. $1266. "A siege is a military investment of a place, so as to intercept, or render dangerous, all communications between the occupants and persons outside of the besieging army; and the place is said to be blockaded, when such communication, by water, is either entirely cut off or rendered dangerous by the presence of the blockading squadron. A place may be both besieged and blockaded at the same time, or its communications by water may be intercepted, while those by land may be left open, and rice versa." Halleck, Int. Law (3rd ed., by Baker), II. 184, § 3. See, also, id. 193, § 15. "On principle, it might well be questioned whether this rule [the right to confiscate vessels bound to a blockaded port] can be applied to a place not completely invested by land as well as by sea. If we examine the reasoning on which is founded the right to intercept and confiscate supplies designed for a blockaded town, it will be difficult to resist the conviction that its extension to towns invested by sea, only, is an unjustifiable encroachment on the rights of neutrals. But it is not of this departure from principle, a departure which has received some sanction from practice, that we mean to complain. It is, that ports not effectually blockaded by a force capable of completely investing them, have yet been declared in a state of blockade, and vessels attempting to enter therein have been seized, and on that account confiscated." Mr. Marshall, Sec. of State, to Mr. King, min. to England, Sept. 20, 1800, 2 Am. State Papers, For. Rel. 486, 488. See 3 Wheaton, appendix, note 1, for an extract from this instruction, and also for a note of Mr. Merry, British minister, to Mr. Madison, April 12, 1804, and an instruction of Mr Smith, Sec. of Navy, to Commodore Preble, Feb. 4, 1804. The blockade of an enemy's coast in order to prevent all intercourse with neutral powers "is a claim which gains no additional strength by an investigation into the foundation on which it rests; and the evils which have accompanied its exercise call for an efficient remedy." The investment of a place by sea and land with a view to its reduction is a mode of warfare which can not reasonably be objected to, so long as war is recognized as an arbiter of national disputes. The original theory of blockades was that of reducing places by means of investment. Marshall, when Secretary of State, in an instruction of September 30, 1800, to Mr. King, American minister in London, declared that it might well be questioned whether the rule of blockade could be applied to a place "not completely invested by land as well as by sea," and that, if the foundations of the subject were examined, it would be difficult to resist the conviction that the extension of the doctrine to towns invested by sea only was an unjustifiable encroachment on the rights of neutrals." Elementary writers abound in expressions indicating a close connection between blockades and sieges, and similar expressions had been used by Lord Stowell. "The blockade of a coast or of commercial positions along it, without any regard to ulterior military operations and with the real design of carrying on a war against trade, and from its very nature against the trade of peaceable and friendly powers, instead of a war against armed men, is a proceeding which it is difficult to reconcile with reason or with the opinions of modern times. Unfortunately, however, the right to do this has been long recognized by 66 the law of nations, accompanied indeed with precautionary conditions, intended to prevent abuse, but which experience has shown to be lamentably inoperative. It is very desirable, therefore, that this constant source of irritation in time of war should be guarded against and the power to interrupt all intercourse with extensive regions be limited and precisely defined, before by a necessary reaction its exercise is met by an armed resistance." Mr. Cass, Sec. of State, to Mr. Mason, min. to France, No. 190, June 27, 1859, MS. Inst. France, XV. 426. See the note under an extract from this instruction, supra, § 1195. The right to blockade an enemy's port with a competent force is a right secured to every belligerent by the law of nations. McCall v. Marine Ins. Co., 8 Cranch, 59. Neutrals may question the existence of a blockade, and challenge the legal authority of the party which has undertaken to establish it. One belligerent, engaged in actual war, has a right to blockade the ports of the other, and neutrals are bound to respect that right. The blockade of the ports of the Confederacy under the proclamation of the President of the 19th of April, 1861, was valid. The Prize Cases, 2 Black, 635; The Circassian, 2 Wall. 135; The Admiral, 3 id. 603. "There has in all probability been an extensive importation of merchandise, especially contraband of war, into Matamoras, destined for the insurgent States, and an exportation of cotton from those States through the same channel. Our right to blockade the mouth of the Rio Grande, for the purpose of preventing this commerce, may be considered as at least questionable. A British steamer with a cargo of cotton has recently been captured near the mouth of that river and has been sent to New York for adjudication. In all probability this Government will ultimately have to pay heavy damages for this capture." Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Stanton, Sec. of War, March 13, 1862, Mr. Seward suggested the occupation of a part of the left bank of the (Ibid.) Mr. Seward's letter referred to the case of the British steamer Labuan, as to which see, also, Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Welles, Sec. of Navy, March 13, 1862, 56 MS. Dom. Let. 487. Article 7 of the treaty of 1848 between the United States and Mexico stipulated that the navigation of the river Bravo (otherwise called the Rio Grande) should be free and common to the citizens of |