§ 40. A kind of reprisal, which is called _Embargo_, must be specially mentioned. This term of Spanish origin means detention, but in International Law it has the technical meaning of detention of ships in port. Now, as by way of reprisal all acts, otherwise illegal, may be performed, there is no doubt that ships of the delinquent State may be prevented from leaving the ports of the injured State for the purpose of compelling the delinquent State to make reparation for the wrong done.[39] [Footnote 39: Thus in 1840--see above, § 34--Great Britain laid an embargo on Sicilian ships.] The matter would not need special mention were it not for the fact that _embargo_ by way of reprisal is to be distinguished from detention of ships for other reasons. According to a now obsolete[40] rule of International Law, conflicting States could, when war was breaking out or impending, lay an _embargo_ on, and appropriate each other's merchantmen. Another kind of _embargo_ is the so-called _arrêt de prince_[41]--that is, a detention of foreign ships for the purpose of preventing them from spreading news of political importance. And there is, thirdly, an _embargo_ arising out of the so-called _jus angariæ_--that is, the right of a belligerent State to seize and make use of neutral property in case of necessity, under the obligation to compensate the neutral owner of such property. States have in the past[42] made use of this kind of _embargo_ when they had not enough ships for the necessary transport of troops, ammunition, and the like. [Footnote 40: See, however, below, § 102_a_ and article 1 of Convention VI., which only stipulates that it is _desirable_ that enemy vessels in the port of a belligerent at the outbreak of war should be allowed to depart freely; see also article 2 of Convention VI.] [Footnote 41: See Steck, _Versuch über Handels-und Schiffahrts-Verträge_ (1782), p. 355; Caumont, _Dictionnaire universel de droit maritime_ (1867), pp. 247-265; Calvo, III. § 1277; Pradier-Fodéré, V. p. 719; Holtzendorff, IV. pp. 98-104.] [Footnote 42: See below, § 364.] These kinds of international _embargo_ must not be confounded with the so-called _civil embargo_ of English Municipal Law[43]--namely, the order of the Sovereign to English ships not to leave English ports. [Footnote 43: See Phillimore, III. § 26.] [Sidenote: Reprisals to be preceded by Negotiations and to be stopped when Reparation is made.]