Trading with the Enemy

Such, then, were the purposes that the policy of blockade was intended to serve. But as has already been mentioned, the curious thing about its practical application did not lie exclusively in this alteration of its objects, but also in the fact that the policy actually pursued was in reality quite different from that which held good on paper. To some extent this was true of the measures that pertained strictly to the law of war at sea, especially to blockades; but to a still greater extent it was true of trading with the enemy. The prohibition of this was regarded, especially in Great Britain, as an indispensable principle of international law and was therefore rigorously maintained on paper; and this notion was also strengthened by the desire of every country to mark the moral gulf that should separate its own subjects from the enemy, or, as the phrase ran, 'to prevent treasonable and improper intercourse'. But there was not the slightest idea of carrying out this fundamental principle in practice. With almost grotesque force the contrast between theory and practice is brought out in one passage in Stephen's book in which he discusses the objection that might be raised against his pleadings in favour of measures against neutral trade, namely, that they would plunge Great Britain into war with the then neutrals and thereby impede her exports. He goes on to say:

Is it asked, 'Who would afterwards carry our manufactures to market?' I answer, 'Our allies, our fellow subjects, our old and new enemies themselves.' In the last war (1778-1783—when Spain and Great Britain were enemies) nothing prevented the supplying of Spanish America with British manufactures, in British bottoms, even when they were liable to confiscation by both the belligerent parties for the act, but that the field of commerce was preoccupied, and the markets glutted by the importations under neutral flags.

But would I advise a toleration of these new 'modes of relieving the hostile colonies'? Its toleration would not be necessary. Even your own hostilities would not be able to overcome the expansive force of your own commerce, when delivered from the unnatural and ruinous competition, of its present privileged enemies. You might often capture the carriers of it and condemn their cargoes; but the effect would chiefly be to raise the price upon the enemy, and the difference would go into the purses of your [prize-taking] seamen. The prize goods themselves, would find their way from your colonies into the hostile territories.

It would be difficult to find a more typical example of the capacity to 'make the best of both worlds'. The legal principle of prohibiting trade with the enemy was constantly maintained, while at the same time full provision was made for exports above all to the enemy, which according to the deeply rooted ideas of the time was of vital interest to the country. The same combination of incompatible views is revealed in almost every utterance that has come down from that time; and when the will existed, it was not difficult to find means for its realization. One of these means was the system of licences, of which Stephen says that 'papal dispensations were not more easily obtained in the days of Luther'. Another means was the system called 'neutralization,' whereby vessels and cargoes that in reality belonged to one or another of the belligerents were declared on sworn—that is to say, perjured—evidence, to belong to neutrals. These tactics—which, however, were sometimes turned against the belligerents themselves, and in such cases were combated both by the law courts and by the supporters of the official policy—were employed on a strictly business basis, commonly with a commission of 1-2 per cent. for the firm that handled the transaction. Especially Emden, in East Friesland, which belonged to Prussia and was consequently neutral, was a centre for transactions of this nature, and there were loud complaints against British marine insurance firms which bound themselves, against a special premium of 1 per cent., not to urge the legally valid plea against the enemy origin of the cargoes, which by law always involved the invalidity of the insurance. Besides this, moreover, there always remained the possibility of winking at an illegal practice which there was no intention of preventing; and it is characteristic of the situation that in the year 1794 Swedish captains openly declared to the British customs officers that their vessels were bound for a French port.

Trading with the enemy also appears as a fairly self-evident practice in nearly all accounts of the commercial conditions then prevailing. This is revealed, for instance, by the British trade statistics themselves, which show that the share of the enemy countries, France and the Netherlands (northern and southern), in the total exports of Great Britain declined only from 15 to 12 per cent. in the years 1792-1800. This, too, is conclusive evidence in support of Stephen's proposition as to the impossibility of war measures adopted by Great Britain to the end of overcoming the expansive force of her own trade.

Following this hasty sketch of the general character of the maritime blockade policy of that time, it seems expedient to show in a more concrete form the development of those measures during the years from the intervention of Great Britain in the revolutionary wars in 1793 down to the Peace of Amiens in 1802. It contains, indeed, a good deal which may be of value, not only in throwing light on the general situation at that time, but also in furnishing a background for what was to come later.