tish
Admiralty Courts with regard to the right of search, great efforts
were made by the Baltic powers to recall and enforce the doctrines of
the armed neutrality of 1780. This attempt is generally known as the
Armed Neutrality of 1800, and was met, promptly overpowered, and the
confederacy finally dissolved, by the naval power of England. Russia
gave up the point, and by her convention with England of the 17th of
June, 1801, expressly agreed, that enemy's property was not to be
protected on board of neutral ships.[198] This settlement was ended by
the death of the Emperor Paul.

APPENDIX TO PART I.

NOTE A.--_The Law of Reprisals_.[199]

Reprisals by commission, or letters of marque and reprisal, granted to
one or more injured persons, in the name and authority of the
Sovereign, constitutes a case of "partial, or special reprisals," and
is considered to be compatible with a state of peace, and was formerly
permitted by the Law of Nations; though it may be doubted if such a
rule would hold good now.[200] General reprisals upon the persons and
property of the subjects of another nation are equivalent to open war.
It is often the first step which is taken at the commencement of a
public war, and may be considered as amounting to a declaration of
hostilities, unless satisfaction is made by the offending state.

A stoppage or seizure (in other words, an embargo), must not be
confounded with complete reprisals. When ships are seized for the
purpose of obtaining satisfaction for a particular injury, or security
against a possible event, that seizure is only an embargo. The vessels
are preserved as long as there is any hope of obtaining satisfaction
or justice. As soon as that hope disappears, they are confiscated, and
the reprisals are accomplished. In fact, that which was _embargo_
becomes reprisals by the _act of confiscation_.[201]

In the words of Lord Stowell:

"Upon property so detained the declaration of war is said to
have a retroactive effect, and to render it liable to be
considered as the property of enemies taken in time of war.
The property is seized provisionally--an act hostile enough
in the mere execution, but equivocal as to its effects, and
liable to be varied by subsequent events, and by the conduct
of the government, the property of whose subjects is so
detained. Where the first seizure is equivocal, if the
matter in dispute terminates in recon