A Treatise on the Law of War

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1810 Excerpt: ... violation of blockade. But on the subject of these, the edict speaks in the disjunctive, and says, if they are chased into their own port Or the port of their destination so that there may be a doubt as to the sense of these words and the law Edict of the 4th of April 1586--of the 4th of August same year, J 9. t De advocat. Hispan. 1.1. c. 20. p. m. 86. tM which results from them. Certainly there can be no doubt, if the same thing is meant by their own port, and the port of their destination; But if an Englishman who was bound to a port of Denmark is driven into a port of England, and coming out of it, and prosecuting his voyage, should be taken before he reached the Danish port, it appears to me that he would be taken in the course and in the very act of the illicit voyage, and that it would be of no consequence, whether it was his own port, or not, which he had entered into, if the voyage which he was engaged in had not been completely finished. Therefore, as disjunctives are frequently to be construed as conjunctives, I understand these words their own port in the said article, to mean the port to which the vessel was bound, and where her voyage was to be ended. I shall put a case, in order more fully to illustrate my meaning: Suppose that a vessel from Zierikzee is taken by the Dunkirkers, who condemn and sell her, and she is purchased by a Scotchman. By the 4th article of the said decree which I have above recited at large: ): it is only lawful to capture and condemn her, if found coming out of an enemy's port before she had entered into her own or into some other free port, but not afterwards. This vessel now bel6nging to the Scotchman, and coming out of Dunkirk, is met with, but not taken. She runs into Yarmouth, where she was...