It is not improbable the course of events in the present war may make it not uninteresting to my readers to have some short account of the origin and meaning of Armed Neutralities, especially as the principles on which they were founded may again be open to discussion.  The right to take enemy’s property on board neutral vessels has, in the present war, been waived by the Queen, in a declaration, dated Buckingham Palace, March 29th 1854.  This is however tempered by a reservation of the right to search for contraband.  Up to the present time the right to take enemy’s goods on board a neutral vessel has in this country been steadily maintained; though in France it has been fluctuating; the interests of another commercial power became the origin of the extraordinary confederacies termed Armed Neutralities.  At an early period it was an object of interest with Holland, a great commercial and navigating country, whose permanent policy was essentially pacific, to obtain a relaxation of the severe rules which had previously been observed in maritime warfare.  The States General of the United Provinces having complained of the provisions in the French Ordinance of 1538, a treaty of commerce was concluded between France and the Republic in 1646, by which the law, as far as respected the capture and confiscation of neutral vessels for carrying enemy’s property, was suspended; but it was found impossible to obtain, at that time, any relaxation as to the liability to capture of enemy’s property in neutral vessels.

This latter concession, however, the United Provinces obtained from France by the treaty of alliance of 1662, and the commercial treaty signed at the same time with the peace, at Nimiguen, in 1671; confirmed by the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697.  The maxim that free ships make free goods was coupled in these treaties with its correlative maxim, enemy’s ships make enemy’s goods.

The same concession was obtained by Holland from England in 1668 and 1674, as the price of an alliance between the two countries against the ambitious designs of Louis XIV.

In the subsequent war of 1756, a controversy arose between England and Holland, in which it was said, on the one hand, that England had violated the rights of neutral commerce; and on the other, that Holland had not fulfilled the guarantees under which those privileges had been granted.

Afterwards, when the American Revolution gave rise to a war between France and Great Britain, the latter power, instead of following the example of her enemy, (who had issued an ordinance prohibiting the seizure of neutral vessels, even when bound to or from enemy ports, unless carrying contraband,) issued an order in council, (March, 1780,) suspending the special stipulations respecting commerce and navigation contained in the Treaty of 1674.

This was the crisis of many complaints made by the neutral powers against Great Britain; and, in 1780, the Empress of Russia proclaimed the principles of the Baltic Code of Neutrality, and declared she would maintain them by force of arms.