France, the British
government saw the necessity for regulating convoy more strictly than
had hitherto been the case. It therefore passed "an act for the better
protection of the trade of the United Kingdom during the present
hostilities with France." By this act (the 43rd Geo. III. Cap. 57) all
vessels not exempted by special licence were required to sail in convoy
and to conform to strict regulations, under penalties of L1000 (or, when
the goods included government stores, of L1500) and the loss of all
claim to insurance in case of capture. (D. H.)

The object of convoying is to attach an official public character to the
convoyed ships, i.e. a sort of assimilation of them to the escorting
ship or ships of war. Thus European states and jurists hold that the
declaration of the commander of the convoy, that there is no contraband
of war on board the convoyed ships, pledges the national good faith, and
must be assumed to be correct in the same way as it is assumed that the
convoy itself is carrying no contraband of war. Great Britain has never
taken this view. Down to 1907 she had maintained that it is materially
impossible for any neutral state to exercise the necessary supervision
to secure absolute accuracy of the ship's papers. Number 29, however, of
the instructions given by the government to the British
plenipotentiaries at the Hague Conference of 1907 stated that "H.M.
government would ... be glad to see the right of search limited in every
practicable way, e.g. by the adoption of a system of consular
certificates declaring the absence of contraband from the cargo...." As
the greater includes the smaller, we may assume that, if a consular
certificate might suffice to exempt from the exercise of search, the
state guarantee of a convoy would certainly suffice. The London
Convention on the Laws and Customs of Naval War has laid down the rules
as to convoys in the following terms:

Neutral vessels under national convoy are exempt from search. The
commander of a convoy gives, in writing, at the request of the
commander of a belligerent warship, all information as to the
character of the vessels and their cargoes, which could be obtained by
search.--Art. 61.

If the commander of the belligerent warship has reason to suspect that
the confidence of the commander of the convoy has been abused, he
communicates his suspicions to him. In such a case it is for the
commander of the convoy alone to inves