The International Law which regulates its conditions as between neutrals and belligerents is shortly this. A belligerent, if strong enough at sea to close one or more ports of his enemy, may give notice to Neutral Powers that such port or ports are blockaded, and thereafter if any neutral vessel attempts to enter or leave them, the belligerent may treat it as an enemy, and may destroy or capture and condemn it as an ordinary prize. To run a blockade then is an operation attended with all the risks of war. Indeed a blockade-runner is in an even worse position than a hostile belligerent; for not being a combatant he may not resist the efforts of the blockaders to destroy or capture him. He is entitled to escape if he can, but a single shot or blow in his own defence makes him a pirate, and a belligerent capturing him may treat him as such. But it must always be remembered that for a belligerent to be entitled to exercise these high prerogatives he must first have constituted a real and effective blockade. A mere declaration that a port is closed is not enough. It must be so closely watched and invested with an adequate naval force that no neutral can leave or enter without running present danger of being sunk or captured. Analogous to the rights arising out of an effective blockade, and always to be clearly distinguished from them, is the right of a belligerent to treat as an enemy a neutral vessel carrying contraband of war to his enemy's ports, and this right he may always exercise, whether the ports in question be effectively blockaded or not. It was this consideration, no doubt, combined with a desire to preserve a strict neutrality and to see the South treated as belligerents and not as mere insurgents, that induced the English Government to recognise the Federal blockade as soon as it was declared. At the opening of the war the Federal Government, in defiance of International Law, declared the whole Southern seaboard under blockade. It was a blockade they were then wholly unable to enforce or even to pretend to enforce, but as most of our blockade-runners carried contraband of war, there was very little to be gained by disputing the Federal pretensions. Some injustice, no doubt, was thus done to the South. But it was more than counterbalanced by the advantage they gained in that the recognition of the blockade made them indisputably belligerents. For these reasons our Government thought it wise to waive its neutral rights and submit to a paper blockade, which did not exist. As the Northern power increased at sea the blockade became more and more effective, and by the time Mr. Taylor had got fully to work it may be said to have been something more than a pretence. Finally it became very strict and thoroughly effective, and it is with this instructive period that his reminiscences are chiefly concerned.