390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



question of permitting by a neutral the domestic manufacture and sale 

 or export to belligerents of war munitions. For the moment we may 

 lay out of view problems arising from the exigencies of "blockade, since 

 this weapon has not as yet formed a feature of present-day hostilities. 

 In time of war the trade of neutrals with belligerents in articles not 

 deemed contraband is absolutely free unless interrupted by blockade 

 which seeks to forbid all traffic irrespective of the character of the 

 goods.^ 



The term contraband, however, marks a sharply differing concep- 

 tion. It is applied to certain classes of merchandise intended on the 

 part of a neutral for belligerent use, but whose seizures by an opposing 

 belligerent is permitted on principles of international law; the mer- 

 chandise is under the han — contra hannum — and its carriage becomes 

 thus tinged with an illicit quality susceptible of enforcement, not by 

 the neutral's government but rather by that of the belligerent. It is 

 the goods themselves, indeed, and not the shippers which are the objects 

 of this ban. The government, with us, of the shipping neutral is not 

 properly concerned save where the transaction is brought within our 

 neutrality statutes by assuming the form of an organized warlike un- 

 dertaking, such as the fitting of a predatory vessel or one intended to 

 afford assistance to belligerents or insurgents, as set out in the Act of 

 Congress of 1794 



recommended by President Washington in his annual address on Dec. 3, 1793; 

 it was drawn by Hamilton; and passed the senate by the casting vote of Vice 

 President Adams. Its enactment grew out of the proceedings of the then 

 French Minister which called forth President Washington's proclamation of 

 neutrality in the spring of 1793.3 



But with the strictly individual manufacture and sale to a belliger- 

 ent of war munitions the case is wholly dissimilar; Jefferson wrote, 

 May 15, 1793, to the French and British ministers at Philadelphia: 



Our citizens have always been free to make, vend and export arms; it is the 

 constant occupation and livelihood of some of them. To suppress their callings, 

 the only means, perhaps, of their subsistence, because a war exists in foreign 

 and distant countries in which we have no concern, would scarcely be expected. 

 It would be hard in principle and impossible in practise. The law of nations, 

 therefore, respecting the rights of those at peace has not required from them 

 such an internal derangement in their occupations. It is satisfied with the ex- 

 ternal penalty pronounced in the President's proclamation, that of confiscation 

 of such portion of these arms as shall fall into the hands of any of the bellig- 

 erent powers on their way to the ports of their enemies. To this penalty our 

 citizens are warned that they will be abandoned ; and that the purchases of arms 

 here may work no inequality between the parties at war, the liberty to make 

 them will be enjoyed equally by both.4 



These expressions of the construction placed upon neutral rights 

 are quite as valid for the exigencies of to-day as for those of 1793. Our 



2 The Peterhoff, 5 Wallace, 28, 56. 



3 166 U. S., 52. 



4 Ford's "Writings of Thomas Jefferson," Vol. VI., pp. 252-257. 



