§14. To prevent the abuse of this right, the owners are required to give security, that the cruise shall be conducted according to instructions and the usages of war; that the rights of neutral nations shall not be violated; and that the captured property shall be brought in for adjudication. §15. When a prize is brought into a port, the captors make a writing, called _libel_, stating the facts of the capture, and praying that the property may be condemned; and this paper is filed in the proper court. If it shall be made to appear that the property was taken from the enemy, the court condemns the property as _prize_, which is then sold, and the proceeds are distributed among the captors. §16. All prizes, whether taken by a public or private armed vessel, primarily belong to the sovereign; and no person has any interest in a prize, except what he receives from the state: and due proof must in all cases be made before the proper court, that the seizure was lawfully made. In this country, prizes are proved and condemned in a district court of the United States, which, when sitting that purpose, is called a _prize court_. Chapter LXVII. Rights and Duties of Neutral Nations; Contraband Goods; Blockade; Right of Search; Safe Conducts and Passports; Truces; Treaties of Peace. §1. A neutral nation is bound to observe a strict impartiality toward the parties at war. If she should aid one party to the injury of the other, she would be liable to be herself treated as an enemy. A loan of money to one of the belligerents, or supplying him with other means of carrying on a war, if done with the view of aiding him in the war, would be a violation of neutrality. But an engagement made in time of peace to furnish a nation a certain number of ships, or troops, or other articles of war, may afterward, in time of war, be fulfilled. §2. A nation is not bound, however, on the occurrence of a war, to change its customary trade, and to cease supplying a belligerent with articles of trade which such belligerent was wont to receive from her, although the goods may afford him the means of carrying on the war. So if a nation has been accustomed to lend money to another for interest, and the latter should become engaged in war with a third power, the neutral would not break her neutrality if she should continue to lend her money. The wrong in any case lies in the _intention_ to aid one to the detriment of the other. §3. This rule, it is believed, is universally admitted in cases of belligerents going themselves to a neutral country to make their purchases. But whether a neutral nation is at full liberty to _carry the goods_ in the cases mentioned, is not so certain. A nation in a just war has a right to deprive her enemy of the means of resisting or injuring her, and therefore may lawfully intercept every thing of a warlike nature which a neutral is carrying to such enemy.