THE HOME AND FOREIGN REVIEW. SEU VETUS EST VERUM DILIGO SIVE NOVUM. VOLUME III. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, 1863. THE HOME AND FOREIGN REVIEW. JULY 1863. BELLIGERENT RIGHTS AT SEA.1 In dealing with the enormous pretensions of certain neutrals Sir William Scott supposed it highly probable that those nations who most exaggerated neutral rights might "remember to forget" them when they happened themselves to be belligerents. The American war has remarkably illustrated his prevision. That it should fall to the lot of the United States to stretch to the utmost the most offensive belligerent rights, to exceed them occasionally, and to carry on war by the confiscation of the property of private individuals, by invoking a servile war, by destroying, or by attempting to destroy, harbours, by burning open and undefended towns, and by laying vast tracts of country under water, would not perhaps have been expected by a simple-minded and credulous reader of previous American despatches; but the fact is one which would have occasioned no surprise to Lord Stowell himself; nor would he have doubted that this barbarous and excessive use of belligerent rights, or this lawless infraction of the law of nations, as the case may be, would meet with the sym 1 Lawrence's Wheaton. Elements of International Law. By Henry Wheaton, LL.D. Second annotated edition, by William Beach Lawrence London: Sampson Low, Son, and Co. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. * Sir W. Scott, in the case of the Maria, reported 1 Rob. 340. b VOL. III. |