de Vattel: Of Neutrality and the Passage of Troops Through a Neutral Country

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* NOW - Buy this resource online! Click here * Of Neutrality — and the Passage of Troops Through a Neutral Country§ 103. Neutral nations.§ 104. Conduct to be observed by a neutral nation.§ 105. An ally may furnish the succor due from him, and remain neuter.§ 106. Right of remaining neuter.§ 107. Treaties of neutrality.§ 108. Additional reason for making these treaties.§ 109. Foundation of the rules of neutrality.§ 110. How levies may be allowed, money lent, and every kind of things sold, without a breach of neutrality.§ 111. Trade of neutral nations with those which are at war.§ 113. Whether such goods may be confiscated.§ 114. Searching§ 115. Enemy's property on§ 116. Neutral property on board an enemy's ship.§ 117. Trade with a besieged town.§ 118. Impartial offices of neutrals.§ 119. Passage of troops through a neutral country.§ 120. Passage to be asked.§ 121. It may be refused for good reasons.§ 122. In what case it may be forced.§ 123. The fear of danger authorizes a refusal.§ 124. or a demand of every reasonable security§ 125. Whether always necessary to give every kind of security required.§ 126. Equality to be observed towards both parties as to the passage. § 127. No complaint lies against a neutral state for granting a passage.§ 128. This state may refuse it from a fear of the resentment of the opposite party.§ 129. And lest her country should become the theatre of war.§ 130. What is included in the grant of passage.§ 131. Safety of the passage.§ 132. No hostility to be committed in a neutral country.§ 133. Neutral country not to afford a retreat to troops, that they may again attack their enemies.§ 134. Conduct to be observed by§ 135. A passage may be refused for a war evidently unjust.
   1. The following is an instance: — It was determined by the Dutch, that, on a vessel's entering a neutral port, after having taken any of the enemies of her nation prisoners on the high seas, she should be obliged to set those prisoners at liberty, because they were then fallen into the power of a nation that was in neutrality with the belligerent parties. — The same rule had been observed by England in the war between Spain and the United Provinces.
   2. See other instances in Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, lib. iii. cap. i. § 5, not. 6.
   3. The Pensionary De Witt, in a letter of January 14, 1654, acknowledges that it would be contrary to the law of nations to prevent neutrals from carrying corn to an enemy's country; but he says that we may lawfully prevent them from supplying the enemy with cordage and other materials for the riffing and equipment of ships of war.

In 1597, queen Elizabeth would not allow the Poles and Danes to furnish Spain with provisions, much less with arms, alleging that, "according to the rules of war, it is lawful to reduce an enemy even by famine, with the view of obliging him to sue for peace," The United Provinces, finding it necessary to observe a greater degree of circumspection, did not prevent neutral nations from carrying on every kind of commerce with Spain. It is true, indeed, that, while their own subjects sold both arms and provisions to the Spaniards, they could not with propriety have attempted to forbid neutral nations to carry on a similar trade. (Grotius, His. of the Disturbances in the Low Countries, book vi.) Nevertheless, in 1646, the United Provinces published an edict prohibiting their own subjects in general, and even neutral nations, to carry either provisions or any other merchandise to Spain, because the Spaniards, "after having, under the appearance of commerce, allured foreign vessels to their ports, detained them, and made use of them as ships of war." And for this reason, the same edict declared that "the confederates, when blocking up their enemies' ports, would seize upon every vessel they saw steering towards those places." — Ibid. book xv. p. 572 — Ed. A.D. 1797.
   4. In our time, the king of Spain prohibited all Hamburgh ships from entering his harbors, because that city had engaged to furnish the Algerines with military stores; and thus he obliged the Hamburghers to cancel their treaty with the Barbarians. — Ed. A.D. 1797.
   5. Grotius, ubi supra.
   6. "I have obtained," said the ambassador Boreel, in a letter to the Grand Pensionary, De Witt, "the abrogation of that pretended French law, that enemies' property involves in confiscation the property of friends; so that, if henceforward any effects belonging to the enemies of France be found in a free Dutch vessel, those effects alone shall be liable to confiscation; and the vessel shall be released, together with all the other property onboard. But I find it impossible to obtain the object of the twenty-fourth article of my instructions, which says, that the immunity of the vessel shall extend to the cargo, even if enemies' property," De Witt's Letters and Negotiations, vol i. p. 80, — Such a law as the latter would be more natural than the former.
   7. Plutarch, in Demetrio.
   8. Grotius, ubi supra.
   9. Plutarch's Life of Agesilaus.
   10. Book ii. chap. ii. § 13, note 5.
   11. By the Eleans, and the ancient inhabitants of Cologne. See Grotius, ibid.
   12. The author of the "Present State of Denmark," written in English, pretends that the Danes had engaged to deliver up the Dutch fleet, but that some seasonable presents, made to the court of Copenhagen, saved it. Chap. x.