Note 275 — Chapter VIII

Vide Martin’s ‘Law of Nations,’ Sup. 5, 437, 435, and ‘Annual Register,’ 1806, p. 677, for the Order in Council detaining Prussian ships. In discussing “the rights of war as to neutrals,” Wheaton remarks that “during the wars of the French Revolution the United States, being neutral, admitted that the immunity of their flag did not extend to cover enemy’s property, as a principle founded on the customary law and established usage of nations, though they sought every opportunity of substituting for it the opposite maxim of free ships, free goods, by conventional arrangements with such nations as were disposed to adopt that modification of the universal law” (vol. ii. pp. 176, 177).