28 MOORE— CONTRABAND OF WAR. [Februarys, 



■ auxiliary to military and naval operations as the ships of an enemy, 

 while subjecting to seizure and confiscation the agricultural products 

 of a neutral? 



The question of contraband may now be considered in its his- 

 torical and experimental aspects. It is unnecessary for this pur- 

 pose to enter minutely into the origin of the subject. It suffices to 

 say that in the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, the law of contraband and of blockade both being unsettled, 

 belligerents often assumed the right to capture all neutral ships and 

 merchandise bound to an enemy's port, thus in effect denying the 

 existence of any right of neutral trade as opposed to belligerent 

 exigencies. The neutral, if he differed with the belligerent as to 

 the necessity of the inhibition or the propriety of the capture, would 

 resort to reprisals. The conflicts that resulted and the constant in- 

 terruptions of trade, rendering it impossible to carry on international 

 commerce without risk of ruinous losses, induced governments in 

 the latter half of the seventeenth century to concert a decided change 

 in practice. 



Grotius, in his De Jure Belli ac Pads (1625), perhaps recording 

 the transition in thought, divided articles, with reference to the ques- 

 tion of contraband, into three classes, (i) those that were of use 

 only in war, (2) those that were of no use in war, but served only 

 for pleasure, and (3) those that were useful both in war and in 

 peace (i. e., things of double use, ancipitis nsus), as money, pro- 

 visions, ships and their appurtenances. The first he held to be pro- 

 hibited; the second, to be free. As to the third, the circumstances 

 of the war must, he said, be considered; and if the belligerent could 

 not protect himself unless he intercepted it, necessity would give 

 him the right to intercept it, " but under the obligation of restitution, 

 except there be cause to the contrary." As an example of " cause 

 to the contrary," he instanced the case of the supplying of a besieged 

 town or a blockaded port, when a surrender or a peace was daily 

 expected. ^^ 



By a treaty between France and the Hanse Towns, signed at 

 Paris Alay 10, 1655, contraband was confined to munitions of war, 



Grotius, "De Jure Belli ac Pacis," Lib. III., c. I., v, 1-3. 



17 , 



