^* The British orders in council, together with English translations of those French decrees with which the present article is specially concerned, are found in the series entitled American State Papers, Foreign Relations, and are in the first three volumes, chiefly in Vol. III. The British orders are also preserved in the serial volumes of the Annual Register, as well as in the appropriate volumes of the great treaty series edited by de Martens and others. The original French texts are to be found in the Bulletin des lois de I'empire franfais, series 4, Vol. VII, published in Paris, 1808.

² Cf. Hall's, J. A. Law of Naval Warfare(London 1921, p.122seq.)Google Scholar: Fauchille, Traite de Droit International Public (Paris 1921, Vol. I I . p. 518 seq.)

³ Cf.Hall, , loc. cit., p.88.Google Scholar

⁴ Fauchille, loc. cit., p. 939 seq.

⁵ History of the United States, Vol. VI, Chap. XX, p. 33 seq.

⁶ See Appendix, page 579.

⁷ Cf. Mahan, Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812, Vol. I, p. 516 seq.

⁸ Cf. Alison, History of Europe, Chap. XLVII.

⁹ Infra, page 581.

¹⁰ “On the 21st of November, 1806, a decree was published at Berlin prohibiting the inhabitants of the entire European territory allied with France from carrying on any commerce with Great Britain, or admitting any merchandise whatever that had been produced in Great Britain or in its colonies. Spain, Italy and Holland were mentioned by name in the decree; Northern Germany was treated as French territory; so that the line of coast closed to the shipping and the produce of the British Empire included everything from the Vistula to the Southern point of Dalmatia, with the exception of Denmark and Portugal, and the Austrian port of Trieste. All property belonging to English subjects, all merchandise of British origin, whoever might be the owner, was ordered to be confiscated: no vessel that had even touched at a British port was permitted to enter a Continental harbour. The grounds of international right advanced by Napoleon in justification of this decree were not intended to be taken seriously: his fixed purpose was to exhaust Great Britain, since he could not destroy her navies, or, according to his own expression, to conquer England upon the Continent. All that was most harsh and unjust in the operation of the Berlin Decree fell,however, more upon Napoleon's own subjects than upon Great Britain. The exclusion of British ships from the harbours of the Allies of France was no more than the exercise of a common right in war; even the seizure of the property of Englishmen, though a violation of international law, bore at least an analogy to the seizure of French property at sea; but the confiscation of the merchandise of German and Dutch traders after it had lain for weeks in their own warehouses, solely because it had been produced in the British Empire, was an act of flagrant and odious oppression. The first result of the Berlin Decree was to fill the trading towns of North Germany with French revenue-officers and inquisitors. Peaceable tradesmen began to understand the import of the battle of Jena when French gendarmes threw their stock into the common furnace, or dragged them to prison for possessing a hogshead of Jamaica sugar or a bale of Leeds cloth. The merchants who possessed a large quantity of English or colonial wares were the first, as they were the heaviest, sufferers by Napoleon's commercial policy; the public at large found the markets supplied by American and Danish traders, until, at a later period, the British Government adopted reprisals, and prevented the ships of neutrals from entering any of the ports from which English vessels were excluded.Then every cottage felt the stress of war. But if the full consequences of the Berlin Decree were delayed until the retaliation of Great Britain had reached the dimensions of Napoleon's own tyranny, the Decree itself marked on the part of Napoleon the assumption of a power in conflict with the common needs and habits of European life. Like most of the schemes of Napoleon subsequent to the victories of 1806, it transgressed the limits of practical statesmanship,and displayed an ambition no longer raised above mere tyranny by its harmony with forms of progress and with better tendencies of the age.”(A History of Modern Europe,by M. A.Fyffe, C. A., Vol.I,1881, pp.327to330, inc.)Google Scholar

¹¹ Text printed in Appendix, infra, p. 583.

¹² Bulletin des lids de Vempire Jrançais, 4 serie, tome 7, Paris, 1808, pp. 357-359

¹³ Cf. “Correspondence between His Majesty's Government and the United States Government Respecting the Rights of Belligerents,”collected in the 1st supplement, Copies of Proclamations, Orders in Council and Documents relating to the European War. (Ottawa,1915). The orders in council of 1914-1917 are published in the volumes of British emergency legislation and are conveniently collected by the Canadian Dominion Government in the series above named, as well as published by the British Government in the series of Statutory Rules and Orders.The correspondence and orders are printed, from official texts furnished by the Department of State of the United States, in the SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS to this JOURNAL issued in July, 1915, October, 1916, and October, 1917.

¹⁴ Text of decision printed in this JOURNAL, April, 1916 (Vol. 10), p. 422.

¹⁵ The decision in the case of the Leonora was affirmed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on July31,1919. See text in this JOURNAL for October, 1919 (Vol. 13, p. 814).