MARITIME INTERNATIONAL LAW. 297 



free from capture, thus doing away with the barbarous practices, 

 exercised by belligerents, of privateering, plundering, burning, and 

 destroying the merchant marine, and blockading the commercial 

 ports of an enemy, which are outrages on humanity, are injurious 

 to commerce, and are fraught with dangers to the prosperity of 

 nations. 



That cannot be called law, which is an abandonment of all law 

 and public rights, a system of rapacity and cruelty, that has been 

 surrendered by the most barbarous, in war on land. 



It is a relic of barbarism, having sprung from the practices of 

 those early times, when the chief means of carrying on naval 

 warfare, were to seize merchantmen, and convert them into men- 

 of-war; but the evils of the system, whether practised by a nation 

 with no Navy, or by a nation with a Navy, are alike flagrant and 

 disastrous, and its abolition ought to be resolutely urged upon all 

 Maritime Nations. 



The analogy of privateering, amongst civilized nations in a state 

 of belligerency, with the piracy of the Dark Ages, and the piratical 

 depredations of later times, is somewhat remarkable, because both 

 inflict tremendous injury on the commerce of non-combatants, and 

 the same arguments urged for the abolition of piracy, in earlier times, 

 may be urged with equal effect for the abolition of that barbarous 

 maritime code relating to privateering. 



In regard to piracy, it was strongly felt by the States that 

 suppressed it, that, as relations between nations became more 

 civilised and interwoven, as commerce became more and more 

 developed, it must therefore be put down. 



They considered, that no nation can interdict the liberty of the 

 sea, which is the common possession of all nations. 



Rome, when Mistress of the world, recognised this rule, and 

 which was well rendered by her Jurist ; 



Et quidem mare commune omnium est, el Httoria sicut aer. 



PIRACY V. PRIVATEERING. » 

 Beyond all doubt, Rome, famous for her jurisconsults, had 



tenaciously held this doctrine, that the Sea can have no master, and 



that it is the common property of the nations. 

 Actuated by these considerations, the ancient Republics of Greece 



