s in neutral bottoms.

Before, however, adopting the measures recommended, with a view to the
prevention of this loss, by Sir George Baden-Powell in your issue of
this morning, it would be desirable to enquire how far they would be in
accordance with international law, and what would be the net amount of
the relief which they would afford.

It is hardly necessary to say that non-compliance with the provisions of
the Declaration of Paris by a non-signatory carries with it none of the
consequences of a breach of the law of nations. The framers of that
somewhat hastily conceived attempt to engraft a paper amendment upon the
slowly matured product of oecumenical opinion, far from professing to
make general law, expressly state that the Declaration "shall not be
binding except upon those Powers who have acceded, or shall accede, to
it." As regards Spain and the United States the Declaration is _res
inter alios acta_.

It follows that, in recommending that any action taken by privateers
against British vessels should be treated as an act of piracy, Sir
George Baden-Powell is advocating an inadmissible atrocity, which
derives no countenance from the view theoretically maintained by the
United States, at the outset of the Civil War, of the illegality of
commissions granted by the Southern Confederation. His recommendation
that our ports should be "closed" to privateers is not very
intelligible. Privateers would, of course, be placed under the
restrictions which were imposed in 1870, in accordance with Lord
Granville's instructions, even on the men-of-war of belligerents. They
would be forbidden to bring in prizes, to stay more than twenty-four
hours, to leave within twenty-four hours of the start of a ship of the
other belligerent, to take more coal than enough to carry them to the
nearest home port, and to take any further supply of coal within three
months. We might, no doubt, carry discouragement of privateers by so
much further as to make refusal of coal absolute in their case, but
hardly so far as to deny entry to them under stress of weather.

The difficulties in the way of accepting Sir G. Baden-Powell's other
suggestion are of a different order. Although we could not complain of
the confiscation by either of the supposed belligerents of enemy
property found in British vessels, as being a violation of international
duty, we might, at our own proper peril, announce that we should treat
such confiscation as "an act of