It follows that, in recommending that any action taken by privateers against British vessels should be treated as an act of piracy, Sir George Baden-Powell is advocating an inadmissible atrocity, which derives no countenance from the view theoretically maintained by the United States, at the outset of the Civil War, of the illegality of commissions granted by the Southern Confederation. His recommendation that our ports should be "closed" to privateers is not very intelligible. Privateers would, of course, be placed under the restrictions which were imposed in 1870, in accordance with Lord Granville's instructions, even on the men-of-war of belligerents. They would be forbidden to bring in prizes, to stay more than twenty-four hours, to leave within twenty-four hours of the start of a ship of the other belligerent, to take more coal than enough to carry them to the nearest home port, and to take any further supply of coal within three months. We might, no doubt, carry discouragement of privateers by so much further as to make refusal of coal absolute in their case, but hardly so far as to deny entry to them under stress of weather. The difficulties in the way of accepting Sir G. Baden-Powell's other suggestion are of a different order. Although we could not complain of the confiscation by either of the supposed belligerents of enemy property found in British vessels, as being a violation of international duty, we might, at our own proper peril, announce that we should treat such confiscation as "an act of war." International law has long abandoned the attempt to define a "just cause of war." That must be left to the appreciation of the nations concerned. So to announce would be, in effect, to say: "Although by acting as you propose you would violate no rule, yet the consequences would be so injurious to me that I should throw my sword into the opposite scale." We should be acting in the spirit of the "Armed Neutralities" of 1780 and 1800. The expediency of so doing depends, first, upon the extent to which the success of our action would obviate the mischief against which it would be directed; and, secondly, upon the likelihood that the benefit which could be obtained only by imposing a new rule of international law _in invitos_ would counterbalance the odium incurred by its imposition. On the former question it may be worth while to remind the mercantile community that, even under the Declaration of Paris, neutral trade must inevitably be put to much inconvenience. Any merchant vessel may be stopped with a view to the verification of her national character, of which the flag is no conclusive evidence. She is further liable to be visited and searched on suspicion of being engaged in the carriage of contraband, or of enemy military persons, or of despatches, or in running a blockade. Should the commander of the visiting cruiser "have probable cause" for suspecting any of these things, though the vessel is in fact innocent of them, he