Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/141

Rh generally may be the exercise of maritime rights, the weaker belligerent, with the aid of interested neutrals, is always able, by means of "neutralizing" contrivances of various kinds, false papers, bills of sale, clearances, invoices, muster rolls, &c., to defeat the processes of prize courts and secure immunity to enemies' goods. It is useless therefore, it is said, to maintain in theory a right which in practice cannot be enforced.

This argument is pretty much the same as if one were to maintain that because pickpockets, coiners, burglars, and forgers often escape detection and punishment, therefore police courts, judges, and prisons had better be abolished and their expenses saved. Frauds on a stupendous scale, especially in the war of 1792, no doubt took place. Regular "neutralizing" establishments were founded—no less than fifty of them in the town of Emden alone—and a whole machinery of "neutralizing"