The only justification that I have heard for this extraordinary concession, which unleashed upon our country the Furies of War to commingle with the Furies of Rebellion at home, is, that President Lincoln undertook to proclaim a _blockade_ of the Rebel ports. By the use of this word “blockade” the concession is vindicated. Had President Lincoln proclaimed a _closing_ of the Rebel ports, there could have been no such concession. This is a mere technicality; lawyers might call it an _apex juris_; and yet on this sharp point England hangs her defence. It is sufficient that in a great case like the present, where the correlative duties of a friendly power are in question, an act fraught with such portentous evil cannot be vindicated on a technicality. In this debate there is no room for technicality on either side. We must look at the substance, and find a reason in nothing short of overruling necessity. War cannot be justified merely on a technicality; nor can the concession of ocean belligerency to rebels without a port or prize court. Such a concession, like war itself, must be at the peril of the nation making it. The British assumption, besides being offensive from mere technicality, is inconsistent with the Proclamation of the President, taken as a whole, which, while appointing a blockade, is careful to reserve the rights of sovereignty, thus putting foreign powers on their guard against any premature concession. After declaring an existing insurrection in certain States, and the obstruction of the laws for the collection of the revenue, as the motive for action, the President invokes not only the Law of Nations, but “the laws of the United States,” and, in further assertion of the national sovereignty, declares Rebel cruisers to be pirates.[56] Clearly the Proclamation must be taken as a whole, and its different provisions so interpreted as to harmonize with each other. If they cannot stand together, then it is the “blockade” which must be modified by the national sovereignty, and not the national sovereignty by the blockade. Such should have been the interpretation of a friendly power, especially when it is considered that there are numerous precedents of what the great German authority, Heffter, calls “Pacific Blockade,” or blockade without concession of ocean belligerency,--as in the case of France, England, and Russia against Turkey, 1827; France against Mexico, 1837-39; France and Great Britain against the Argentine Republic, 1838-48; Russia against the Circassians, 1831-36, illustrated by the seizure of the Vixen, so famous in diplomatic history.[57] Cases like these led Heffter to lay down the rule, that “_blockade_” does not necessarily constitute _a state of regular war_,[58] as was assumed by the British Proclamation, even in the face of positive words by President Lincoln asserting the national sovereignty and appealing to “the laws of the United States.” The existence of such cases was like a notice to the