Note 9 — I THE NEUTRAL MERCHANT: THREE AMERICAN NOTES AND THE ANSWERS

Letters of Historicus, p. 121:—‘The recent unfortunate evasion of the Alabama has given rise to much discussion on the general duty of a neutral Government with respect to the trade of its own subjects with the belligerents in contraband of war. One might have supposed that if there were any question which the authority of accredited writers, the definitions of public documents, and the universal practice of nations, had clearly and decisively ascertained, it was this very question on which, unhappily, there seems to prevail a most general and unfortunate misapprehension. This misapprehension, grave as it is in the exasperation which it is calculated to produce between friendly nations, is not altogether inexplicable. We have the misfortune to live in days when, in the name of liberalism, philanthropy, and civilisation, we are invited to upset the whole fabric of international law which the reason of jurists has designed and the usage of nations has built up, and to rear upon its ruins the trumpery edifice of a shallow caprice. It is the old story of that pretentious philosophy which, by a recurrence to first principles, attempted with so little success to operate the regeneration of mankind. I would that we had yet among us the multitudinous eloquence of Burke or the poignant wit of Canning to do condign justice upon this presumptuous sciolism.’