release and make full compensation, and that the right of visit and search should be exercised with as much consideration as possible and without undue molestation to neutral commerce.  It was understood that neutral merchant vessels on the high seas or in the territorial waters of the belligerent powers should be liable to visit and search, but again with the necessary caution that the right should not be exercised in waters too remote from the seat of war, and that additional consideration be conceded to mail steamers.[42]

[Footnote 42:  Sessional Papers, Africa, No.  I (1900), C. 33, p. 24.  Speech in Reichstag, Jan. 19, 1900.]

There would seem to be no necessary opposition between the German position in 1900 and that taken by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1863 with reference to the ships Springbok and Peterhof.  In the latter case the cargo of the ship was condemned on the ground that the goods, not necessarily contraband in character, were being carried into the neutral Mexican port of Matamoras.  It was believed, however, that the goods were not intended to be sold there as a matter of trade, but were destined for the use of the forces of the Southern Confederacy across the Rio Grande River.  To these belligerent forces it was presumed the goods were to be conveyed as the final stage of their voyage, but the decision of the court was distinctly upon the guilt of a breach of blockade.[43] The character of the goods did not give just ground for seizure provided they were intended in good faith for a neutral market, but the character of the goods showed that they were not so intended, and the simulated papers of the ship substantiated this suspicion.  But it is to be repeated, condemnation was declared upon the ground of an intended breach of an established blockade as the final stage of the voyage.  Had there been no blockade of the Southern States these decisions could not have been upheld.  No contraband of war was possible between the neutral ports in the course of bona fide neutral trade, but the character of the goods and the dishonest character of the ships made possible the conclusive presumption that the goods were ultimately intended for the blockaded enemy.

[Footnote 43:  Sessional Papers, Miscl., No.  I (1900), C. 34, p. 60.]

In the seizure of the German ships, on the other hand, the British Government was not able to show that the ships were really carrying contraband or that there was any irregularity in their papers.  The protest of the German Government and its later announcement of certain rules which should govern such cases merely cautioned Great Britain against an undue exercise of the recognized right of visit and search.  The attempt was not made to lay down a new system of principles which would render the carrying of contraband by neutrals unhampered by the belligerents, for Count Von Buelow in setting forth the tentative system which in the opinion of his Government would protect neutral