Earl Russell himself, so swift to make this concession, is led to confess the necessity of Prize Courts on the part of _ocean_ belligerents, and thus exposes the irrational character of his own work. In a letter to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, occasioned by the destruction of British cargoes, the Minister says: “The owners of any British property, not being contraband of war, on board a Federal vessel captured and destroyed by a Confederate vessel of war, _may claim in a Confederate Prize Court compensation for destruction of such property_.”[149] Even in the very speech announcing the belligerent rights of our Rebels, including the right to visit and detain British merchant vessels having enemy’s property on board and to confiscate such property, Earl Russell was compelled to declare, that “it was _necessarily implied_, as a condition of such acknowledgment, that the detention was for the purpose of bringing the vessels detained before an established Court of Prize, and that confiscation did not take place until after condemnation by such competent tribunal.”[150] Such was the express condition, obviously to secure justice. If there be no Prize Court, then justice must fail; and with this failure tumbles _in fact_ the whole wretched pretension of _ocean_ belligerence, except in the galvanism of a Queen’s proclamation or a Cabinet concession. If a cruiser may at any time burn prizes, it is because of some exceptional exigency in a particular case, and not according to general rule, which practically declares that there can be no right to take a prize, if there be no port into which it may be carried. The right of capture and the right of trial are the complements of each other, through which a harsh prerogative is supposed to be rounded into the proper form of civilized warfare. Therefore every ship and cargo burned by the captors for the reason that they had no port testifies that they are without that vital sovereignty on the ocean which is needed in the exercise of belligerent jurisdiction, and that they are not _ocean_ belligerents _in fact_. Nay, more, all these bonfires of the sea cry out against the power which by precipitate concession furnished the torch. As well invest the rebel rajahs of India, who never tasted salt water, with this ocean prerogative, so that they too may rob and burn; as well constitute land-locked Poland, now in arms for independence, an ocean belligerent,--or enroll mountain Switzerland in the same class,--or join with Shakespeare in giving to inland Bohemia an outlook upon the ocean.[151]