(4.) The complaint about _Habeas Corpus_ was hardly answered, when another was solemnly presented, founded on the legitimate effort to complete the blockade of Charleston, by sinking at the mouth of its harbor ships laden with stone, usually known as “the stone blockade.” Did anybody find fault with the Russians for sinking their men-of-war in the harbor of Sebastopol? Nor is the allegation of permanent damage to the harbor tenable in the present advanced state of engineering science. A London journal, not inferior to any other in character and ability, has recently recognized the normal character of such a proceeding by mentioning it as a possible defence for Calcutta against naval force, saying: “The ascent of the river without pilots is impossible; for the Government can alter all the channels in a night by _merely sinking a couple of loaded schooners_.”[10] In common times her Majesty’s Government would shrink from such intermeddling. It could not forget that history, early and late, and especially English history, abounds in similar incidents: that, as long ago as 1436, at the siege of Calais by the Duke of Burgundy, and also in 1628, at the memorable siege of Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu, ships laden with stone were sunk in the harbor; that, during the war of the Revolution, in 1779, six vessels were sunk by the British commander in the Savannah River, not far from this very Charleston, as a protection against the approach of the French naval forces; that, in 1804, under direction of the British Admiralty, there was an attempt, notorious from contemporary jest,[11] to choke the entrance into the harbor of Boulogne by sinking stone vessels; and that, in 1809, the same blockade of another port was recommended to the Admiralty by no less a person than Lord Dundonald, saying: “Ships filled with stones would ruin forever the anchorage of Aix, and some old vessels of the line well loaded would be excellent for the purpose.”[12] This complaint by the British Cabinet becomes doubly strange, when it is considered that one of the most conspicuous treaties of modern history contains solemn exactions from France by England herself, that the harbor of Dunkirk, whose prosperity was regarded with jealousy, should be permanently “filled up,” so that it could no longer furnish those hospitalities to commerce for which it was famous. This was the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. The Triple Alliance, four years later, compelled France to stipulate again that nothing should be omitted “which Great Britain could think necessary for the entire destruction of the harbor”; and the latter power was authorized to send commissioners as “ocular witnesses of the execution of the treaty.” These humiliating provisions were renewed in successive treaties down to the Peace of Versailles, in 1783, when the immunity of that harbor was recognized with American Independence. And yet it is Great Britain, thus persistent in closing ports and rivers, that now