The Law of Blockade

“Sept. 9. (To Henry Ashworth, Esq.)—The Blockade Laws are about as rascally an invention as the old Corn Laws. Suppose Tom Sayers lived in a street, and on the opposite side lived a shopkeeper with whom he has been in the habit of dealing. Tom quarrels with his shopkeeper and forthwith sends him a challenge to fight, which is accepted. Tom, being a powerful man, sends word to each and every house-holder in the street that he is going to fight the shopkeeper, and that until he has finished fighting no person in the street must have any dealings with the shopkeeper. ‘We have nothing to do with your quarrel,’ say the inhabitants, ‘and you have no right to right to stop our dealings with the shopkeeper.’

“The argument is just as good on a large scale as on a small one—for fifty millions as for one person. The various governments of England have been the chief and almost only supporters of the blockade laws, and no nation on earth will be so much injured by them, not to say a word of their injustice. The sooner the blockade laws follow the Corn and Navigation laws the better it will be for all nations, and for England in particular.”