Note 25 — OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS: SHOWING

The recent British Foreign Enlistment Act, passed August 9, 1870, entitled “An Act to regulate the conduct of her Majesty’s subjects during the existence of hostilities between foreign states with which her Majesty is at peace,” makes it illegal, if any person within her Majesty’s dominions “builds, or agrees to build, or causes to be built, any ship, with intent, or knowledge, or having reasonable cause to believe that the same shall or will be employed in the military or naval service of any foreign state at war with any friendly state.” (Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, transmitted to Congress December 5, 1870, p. 159.) Lord Westbury, an ex-Chancellor, said in the House of Lords, March 27, 1868, “It was not a question whether armed ships had actually left our shores, but it was a question whether ships with a view to war had been built in our ports by one of two belligerents.”—Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3d Ser., Vol. CXCI. col. 346.