1. The rule of international law upon the subject may, I think, be expressed as follows: "A belligerent is entitled to capture a neutral ship engaged in carrying contraband of war to his enemy, to confiscate the contraband cargo, and, in some cases, to confiscate the ship also, without thereby giving to, the Power to whose subjects the property in question belongs any ground for complaint." Or, to vary the phrase, "a neutral Power is bound to acquiesce in losses inflicted by a belligerent upon such of its subjects as are engaged in adding to the military resources of the enemy of that belligerent." This is the rule to which the nations have consented, as a compromise between the right of the neutral State that its subjects should carry on their trade without interruption, and the right of the belligerent State to prevent that trade from bringing an accession of strength to his enemy. International law here, as always, deals with relations between States, and has nothing to do with the contraband trader, except in so far as it deprives him of the protection of his Government. If authority were needed for what is here advanced, it might be found in Mr. Justice Story's judgment in the _Santissima Trinidad_, in President Pierce's message of 1854, and in the statement by the French Government in 1898, with reference to the case of the _Fram_, that "the neutral State is not required to prevent the sending of arms and ammunition by its subjects." 2. Neither is carriage of contraband any offence against the law of England; as may be learnt, by any one who is in doubt as to the statement, from the lucid language of Lord Westbury in _Ex parte Chavasse_ (34 L.J., Bkry., 17). And this brings me to the gist of this letter. I have long thought that the form of the Proclamation of Neutrality now in use in this country much needs reconsideration and redrafting. The clauses of the Proclamation which are set out by Mr. Gibson Bowles in your issue of this morning rightly announce that every person engaging in breach of blockade or carriage of contraband "will be justly liable to hostile capture and to the penalties denounced by the law of nations in that behalf, and will in no wise obtain protection from us against such capture or such penalties." So far, so good. But the Proclamation also speaks of such acts as those just mentioned as being done "in contempt of this our Royal Proclamation, in derogation of their duty as subjects of a neutral Power in a war between other Powers, or in violation or contravention of the law of nations in that behalf." It proceeds to say that all persons "who may misconduct themselves in the premises ... will incur our high displeasure for such misconduct." I venture to submit that all these last-quoted phrases are of the nature of misleading rhetoric, and should be eliminated from a statement the effective purport of which is to warn British subjects of the treatment