RIGHT TO PROTECT INTERESTS AND INDUSTRY. 155 



these orders was to arrest upon the sea the lawful trade of neutrals, not 

 with blockaded ports, nor even belligerent ports not blockaded, but with 

 neutral ports. Yet the validity of these orders upon the principles of 

 international law, severe as their consequences were, was affirmed by 

 the great judicial authority of Lord Stowell, then Sir William Scott, 

 in several cases of capture that came before him in admiralty, upon the 

 ground that they were necessary measures of self defense to which all 

 private rights must give way. 



In the case of the Success (1 Dodson Eep., p. 133), he said: 



The blockade thus imposed is certainly of a new and extended kind, 

 but has arisen necessarily out of the extraordinary decrees issued by 

 the ruler of France against the commerce of this country, and subsists, 

 therefore, in the apprehension of the court at least, in perfect justice. 



In the case of the Fox (1 Edwards Adm. Eep., 311), he remarked in 

 reference to the same orders: 



When the state, in consequence of gross outrages upon the laws of 

 nations committed by its adversary, w:rs compelled by a necessity 

 which it laments, to resort to measures which it otherwise condemns, it 

 pledged itself to the revocation of those measures as soon as the 

 necessity ceases. 



Again, speaking of those retaliatory measures as necessary for the 

 defense of commerce, he says in another case: 



In that character they have been justly, in my apprehension, deemed 

 reconcilable with those rules of natural justice by which the inter- 

 national communication of independent states is usually governed. 

 (The Snipe, Edw. Adm. Eep., 382.) 



Lord Stowell's judgments in these cases have never been criticised 

 or disapproved by any court of justice, nor by any writer of repute on 

 international law. The necessity relied upon might perhaps be ques- 

 tioned, but when that is established, it is not to be doubted that it 

 becomes the measure of the rigid . 



Another very forcible illustration of the principle contended for, is to 

 be seen in the exclusive right asserted by Great Britain to the fisheries 

 on the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia coasts, not only within what 

 are called the territorial seas, but as far from the coast as the fisheries 

 extend. The full diplomatic discussion of this subject will be found in 

 the " Documents relating to the transactions at the negotiation of Ghent, 

 collected and published by John Quincy Adams, one of the Commissioners 

 of the United States.^ The occasion was the negotiation of the treaty 

 of peace between the United States and Great Britain, at the conclu- 

 sion of the war of 1812. 



