on condition that the master should.
give security to dispose of his cargo in the ports of some country in
amity with his Britannic Majesty. This was resisted by the Neutral
Powers, Sweden, Denmark, and especially the United States.

This order was justified upon the ground, that by the modern law of
nations, all provisions are to be considered as contraband, and as
such liable to confiscation, wherever depriving an enemy of these
supplies is one of the means intended to be employed for reducing him
to terms. The actual situation of France, (it was said,) was
notoriously such, as to lead to the employing this mode of distressing
her by the joint operations of the various powers engaged in the war;
and the reasonings of the text writers applying to all cases of this
sort were more applicable to the present case, in which the distress
resulted from the unusual mode of war adopted by the enemy himself, in
having armed almost the whole laboring class of the French nation, for
the purpose of commencing and supporting hostilities against almost
all European Governments; but this reasoning was most of all
applicable to a trade, which was in a great measure carried on by the
then actual rulers of France, and was no longer to be regarded as a
mercantile speculation of individuals, but as an immediate operation
of the very persons who had declared war, and were then carrying it on
against Great Britain.

This reasoning was resisted by the neutral powers--Sweden, Denmark,
and especially the United States. The American Government insisted,
that when two nations go to war, other nations who choose to remain at
peace, retain their natural right to pursue their agriculture,
manufactures, and ordinary vocations; to carry the produce of their
industry for exchange to all countries, belligerent or neutral, (as
usual;) to go and come freely without injury or molestation; in short,
that the war, (amongst other) should be for neutral purposes, as if it
did not exist; the only exceptions being trade in implements of war,
or to a place blockaded by its enemy. That there were sufficient
treaties to decide what were implements of war. Corn, flour, and meal,
were not of the class of contraband.

The result of this controversy was a treaty with the United States in
1794. It confined contraband to military and naval stores; and with
respect to provisions not generally contraband, it was agreed,

"That whenever such articles became contrab