Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/95

Rh enemy requires that Great Britain and all maritime nations shall at his pleasure renounce the natural and incontestable rights of war, and that Great Britain in particular shall surrender all the advantages of her naval superiority."

And at the Congress of Chatillon, 1814, the English Plenipotentiary, Lord Castlereagh, had orders from his government not even to discuss the question of maritime rights.

Contrast the uniform conduct and determination of English statesmen between 1780 and 1815 (thirty-five years of warlike effort and dangers) with the conduct of the English Government in 1856. The short statement I have made, of the successive assertions and abandonments of the principles of the armed neutrality by their champions, will clearly show that no constant or uniform system has ever been founded on them even by their authors, much less by the Powers of Europe in