Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/330

320 :"It is indeed quite astonishing," he said, "to hear the word 'retaliation' twisted and perverted in a manner equally repugnant to grammar and common-sense. . . . It is a new application of the term, that if A strikes me, I may retaliate by striking B. . . . I cannot, my Lords, conceive anything more preposterous and senseless than the idea of retaliation upon a neutral on whom the decree has never been executed, because it is only by its execution on him that we can be injured."

Erskine supported his positions by a long professional argument. Lord Chancellor Eldon replied by developing international law in a direction till then unexplored.


 * "I would beg the House to consider what is meant by the law of nations," he began. "It is formed of an accumulation of the dicta of wise men in different ages, and applying to different circumstances, but none resembling in any respect such a state of things as at present exists in the face of the world.  Indeed, none of the writers upon the subject of this law appear to have such a state in their contemplation.  But yet nothing is to be found in their writings which does not fully warrant the right of self-defence and retaliation.  Upon that right the present ministers acted in advising those Orders in Council, and upon the same right their predecessors issued the order of the 7th of January."

The doctrine that because international law wanted the sanction of a well-defined force it was, strictly speaking, no law at all, was naturally favored by the