The question which I have ventured to raise is whether the _textus receptus_, built up, as it has been, by successive accretions, is sufficiently in accordance with the facts to which it purports to call the attention of British subjects to be properly submitted to His Majesty for signature. I would suggest for consideration: 1. Whether the phrases commanding obedience, on pain of His Majesty's "high displeasure," and the term "misconduct," should not be used only with reference to offences recognised as such by the law of England. 2. Whether such condensed, and therefore incorrect, though very commonly employed, expressions as imply that breach of blockade and carriage of contraband are "in violation of the law of nations," and are liable to "the penalties denounced by the law of nations," should not be replaced by expressions more scientifically correct. The law of nations neither prohibits the acts in question nor prescribes penalties to be incurred by the doers of them. What it really does is to define the measures to which a belligerent may resort for the suppression of such acts, without laying himself open to remonstrance from the neutral Government to which the traders implicated owe allegiance. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. E. HOLLAND. Oxford, December 5 (1904). THE BRITISH PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY Sir,--I am glad that Mr. Gibson Bowles has called attention to certain respects in which the Proclamation of Neutrality issued by our Government on the 3rd of the present month differs from that issued on February 11, 1904. In two letters addressed to you with reference to the Proclamation of that year, I ventured to point out what appeared to me to be its defects, alike from a scientific and from a practical point of view. The present Proclamation has slightly minimised these defects, but, as a whole, remains open to the objections which I then raised. I have no wish to repeat in detail the contents of my letters of 1904, especially as they may be now found in my _Letters upon War and Neutrality_, published in 1909, pp. 95 and 98, but am unwilling not to take this opportunity once more to urge the desirability of redrafting the document in question.