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 the last chapter we reviewed the exceptions to the common law of the sea introduced by special treaties between different nations. So far from being a challenge of the principle of the common law, these special exceptions were the best of all possible acknowledgments of the force of that common law where no treaties intervened. The only direct challenge to the principle itself took place in the middle of the 18th century, in a negotiation known in history as the Prussian Remonstrance, which ended in the signal defeat of the Remonstrants and the conclusive establishment of the English or rather