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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
BLOCKADES AND BLOCKADE-RUNNERS.
IN ALL SHADES.
THE ASCENT OF CLOUDY MOUNTAIN, NEW GUINEA.
TREASURE TROVE.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
JACK, THE BUSHRANGER.
THE BIRDS AT SOUTH KENSINGTON.
THE LINDSAY’S BRIDAL.
No. 130.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1886.
BLOCKADES AND BLOCKADE-RUNNERS.
For three-quarters of a century, England differedfrom the other great maritime states of Europe asto the way in which blockade should be defined.To begin with, it may be enough to explainthat a territory is said to be blockaded whenaccess to or egress from its seaports is preventedby the naval forces of another state. When astate, for purposes of its own, fiscal or hygienic,declares that certain of its own ports shall beclosed against foreign vessels, that decree must berespected by other states to whose notice it isduly brought, provided that those ports are reallyunder the control of the executive of that state.But that is not a blockade; it is a mere closureof ports, which any government, in virtue of itsinherent sovereignty within the borders of its ownterritory, is quite entitled to announce. Blockadeis essentially a war measure. When the Presidentof the United States, in April 1861, proclaimedthat a forcible blockade of the SouthernStates would be forthwith instituted, Englandand France immediately declared their neutrality,and although that meant that they recognisedthe Confederates as belligerents, and not as rebels,their action was unobjectionable, because, wheneverthe Northern States issued that proclamation,they by implication admitted that they wereengaged in war, and not merely in the suppressionof a rebellion. In recent times, however, recoursehas been had to what has been termed ‘pacificblockade;’ thus, the coasts of Greece were blockadedin 1827 by the English, French, and Russiansquadrons, although all three powers professed tobe at peace with Turkey (under whose dominionGreece then was); and from 1845 to 1848, Franceand England prevented access to La Plata, althoughno war was declared. To admit such procedureas legitimate would simply mean that one statemight put in force against another measures destructiveof the trade of neutral countries, and yetexpect those countries to view the whole operationsas pacific. This objection might not applyto that paci