Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/557

 1920 DUTCH MISSIONS TO ENGLAND IN 1689 549 nationality found sailing for French ports or carrying goods to French subjects were to be taken and reputed lawful prize. Neutrals were to be notified that ships which had sailed before the notification of this decision would be turned back when they were found sailing to French ports and, when found coming from them with French goods, would be made to go back and set down the goods again. After the notification they were not to be turned back but confiscated. Allied states were to be asked to co-operate in these measures. The genesis of this policy cannot well here be traced, and it will not be necessary to make any laborious criticism of it from the point of view of policy, because its failure during the war, the succession of expedients by which it was attempted to prolong or to revive it, sufficiently show how far it went beyond what was possible. But it will be as well to notice here some of the arguments which have been used when the treaty has been considered not as an act of policy, but as a document marking a step in the development of international law. From that point of view it is apt to appear as an isolated and unreasonable measure, a departure from the regular stream of progress. The reason is, of course, that it was not primarily meant as a measure for improving international law, but as a measure for winning the war against France ; and as a measure of hostility, although it proved impracticable, none the less it was the expression of a state of things which now existed for the first time, the union of the two proverbial and predominant sea-powers. The measure itself is less surprising than its failure. From the point of view of international law, of the regulation and reasonable ordering of international relations by permanent and general rules, its failure is easier to understand. If it had inaugurated a system, if its principle had become established as the normal principle for commerce in time of war, such a system could have been maintained only by an incredible indifference of neutrals or by an incredible preponderance of justice on one side of every con- flict. It has been said of it : ' that document does not profess to exercise a belligerent right against neutrals, but in effect to forbid neutrality.' ^ As for professions, indeed, the treaty makes none, but in effect it did forbid neutrality to merchant shipping. It cut the world of commerce into two halves, and it ordered all ships to trade only in that half which belonged to the party of William. For commercial reasons the neutrals might have been willing to throw in their lot with him, and he might have been so much and so obviously in the right as to be morally justified in exacting this degree of hostility to France. At the time when the treaty was made, he probably imagined that the ' Westlake, International Law, ii. 226.