14 CAPTAIN ZACHARY G. LAMSON 



possessions, the Spice Islands and China 

 was subject to comparatively few restric- 

 tions. 



Such were the conditions of trade in time 

 of peace, but from 1800 to 1812, with the 

 exception of eighteen months, there was 

 no peace. The United States was neutral, 

 but the rest of the world, all that counted 

 commercially, was at war. What rights 

 then did this neutrality give us ? 



The rights of neutral nations in time of 

 war were determined by international law, 

 and this law was evolved from the customs 

 and precedents of former wars. It could not 

 from its very nature be inflexible, as there 

 were often new conditions to be met, and 

 the way it was construed depended largely 

 on the interests of the party construing it. 

 England believed, justly or unjustly, that 

 she owed her maritime superiority to her 

 navigation laws, and her construction of 

 international law was biased by her deter- 

 mination not to allow those laws to be im- 

 paired. In time of peace, as we have shown, 



