Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/87

 Prussian Remonstrance was a bold and audacious attempt to challenge the law of nations on the subject of the neutral flag. The armed neutralities of 1780 and 1800 must rather be considered as forcible attempts to change that law, by taking advantage of a concurrence of events which seemed to place England at the mercy of the armed confederates.

In the first armed neutrality of 1780, England had hardly emerged from a death grapple with her great revolted colony, in which, by the aid of France, assisted by the forces of Spain and Holland, that colony had all but achieved its independence.