These were the questions raised as often as a firm of shipowners in a neutral country saw their vessel come back into port cleared of its cargo, or heard that it was lying in the Thames awaiting the judgment of the Admiralty Court. Great Britain claimed the right to seize all French property, in whatever vessel it might be sailing, and to confiscate, as contraband of war, not only muskets, gunpowder, and cannon, but wheat, on which the provisioning of armies depended, and hemp, pitch, iron, and timber, out of which the navies of her adversary were formed. The Neutrals, on the other hand, demanded that a neutral flag should give safe passage to all goods on board, not being contraband of war; that the presence of a vessel of State as convoy should exempt merchantmen from search; that no port should be considered in a state of blockade unless a competent blockading force was actually in front of it; and that contraband of war should include no other stores than those directly available for battle. Considerations of reason and equity may be urged in support of every possible theory of the rights of belligerents and neutrals; but the theory of every nation has, as a matter of fact, been that which at the time accorded with its own interests. When a long era of peace had familiarised Great Britain with the idea that in the future struggles of Europe it was more likely to be a spectator than a belligerent, Great Britain accepted the Neutrals' theory of international law at the Congress of Paris in 1856; but in 1801, when the lot of England seemed to be eternal warfare, any limitation of the rights of a belligerent appeared to every English jurist to contradict the first principles of reason. Better to add a general maritime war to the existing difficulties of the country than to abandon the exercise of its naval superiority in crippling the commerce of an adversary. The Declaration of armed Neutrality, announcing the intention of the Allied Powers to resist the seizure of French goods on board their own merchantmen, was treated in this country as a declaration of war. The Government laid an embargo upon all vessels of the allied neutrals lying in English ports (Jan. 14th, 1801), and issued a swarm of privateers against the trading ships making for the Baltic. Negotiations failed to lower the demands of either side, and England prepared to deal with the navies of Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia. [Battle of Copenhagen, April 2, 1801.]