340 ANNUAL REGISTER, ISIf. 



additional conditions equally extra- 

 vagant ; and he further announces 

 the penalties of those decrees to be 

 in force against all nations which 

 shall suffer their flag to be, as it is 

 termed in this new code, " dena- 

 tionalized." 



In addition to the disavowal of 

 the blockade of May, 1806, and 

 of the principles on which that 

 blockade was established, and in 

 addition to the repeal of the British 

 Orders in Council, he demands an 

 admission of the principles, that the 

 goods of an enemy, carried under a 

 neutral flag, shall be treated as 

 neutral : — that neutral property un- 

 der the flag of an enemy shall be 

 treated as hostile ; — that arms and 

 warlike stores alone (to the ex- 

 clusion of ship-timber and other 

 articles of naval equipment) shall 

 be regarded as contraband of war ; — 

 and that no ports shall be con- 

 sidered as lawfully blockaded, ex- 

 cept such as are invested and be- 

 sieged, in the presumption of their 

 being taken j^en prevention d'etre 

 pris], and into which a merchant- 

 ship cannot enter without danger. 



By these and other demands, the 

 enemy in fact requires, that Great 

 Britain and all civilised nations 

 shall renounce, at his arbitrary 

 pleasure, the ordinary and indis- 

 putable rights of maritime war ; 

 that Great Britain, in particular, 

 shall forego the advantages of her 

 naval superiority, and allow the 

 commercial property, as well as 

 the produce and manufactures of 

 France and her confederates, to 

 pass the ocean in security, whilst 

 the subjects of Great Britain are to 

 be in effect proscribed from all 

 commercial intercourse with other 

 nations ; and the produce and ma- 

 nufactures of these realms are to 



be excluded from every country in 

 the world to which the arms or the 

 influence of the enemy can extend. 



Such are the demands to which 

 the British government is sum- 

 moned to submit — to the abandon- 

 ment of its most ancient, essential, 

 and undoubted maritime rights. 

 Such is the code by which France 

 hopes, under cover of a neutral 

 flag, to render her commerce un- 

 assailable by sea ; whilst she pro- 

 ceeds to invade or to incorporate 

 with her own dominions all states 

 that hesitate to sacrifice their na- 

 tional interests at her command, 

 and in abdication of their just 

 rights, to adopt a code, by which 

 they are required to exclude, under 

 the mask of municipal regulation, 

 whatever is British from their do- 

 minions. 



The pretext for these extrava- 

 gant demands, is, that some of 

 those principles were adopted by 

 voluntary compact in the treaty of 

 Utrecht ; as if a treaty once exist- 

 ing between two particular coun- 

 tries, founded on special and 

 reciprocal considerations, binding 

 only on the contracting parties, 

 and which in the last treaty of peace 

 between the same powers, had not 

 been revived, were to be regarded 

 as declaratory of the public law of 

 nations. 



It is needless for his Royal High- 

 ness to demonstrate the injustice of 

 such pretensions. He might other- 

 wiseappeal to the practiceof France 

 herself, in this and in former wars, 

 and to her own established codes of 

 maritime law : it is sufficient that 

 these new demands of the enemy 

 form a wide departure from those 

 conditions on which the alleged re- 

 peal of the French Decrees was ac- 

 cepted by America, and upon which 



alone 



