"It is not easy to convey to the mind of the mercantile classes of the present generation, who have had no practical experience of the state of war, the extent of the change which is thus effected in their favour. The vigilance of our cruisers and the acuteness of our lawyers were incessantly employed in all former contests in tracking out the faintest scent of enemy's property on board every vessel met on the seas. The character of enemy's property was regarded as an infection, and reprobated with all the terms originally reserved for guilty practices. The mercantile ingenuity of the country, pressed by the increased demand and exorbitant prices of prohibited articles, was strained to evade by every species of fraud these prohibitions, and a warfare was carried on within our own courts of justice between the pitiless exactions of the laws of war and the irresistible impulse of the laws of trade. To allay, in some degree, the inconveniences of this system, and to provide by legal means some of those commodities which it was for the public interest to purchase, the English and French Governments were driven, even during the height of the Continental System, to the granting of licences. But here again fresh abuses of every kind arose. These licences were an authorized mode of evading that very prohibition which the belligerents conceived it to be for their interest to maintain. They conferred a monopoly on the holder of the licence, which enabled him to sell his cargo of French wines or French silks at a prohibition price; and the law books of the time are still full of the endless litigation and fraud to which these practices gave rise. "From all these evils we trust that the Order in Council of the 15th April has permanently relieved us, and the change it is calculated to bring about in the state of war is not of inferior importance to that which marked the transition from Protection to Free Trade in the state of peace. The system of licences is at an end, for all the liberty of trade with the enemy which it is in the power of the Government to confer at all, is thus conferred at once, and indiscriminately upon all; and, unless the Russian Government find means to maintain a prohibitive system on their frontiers, we hope that the supply of raw material from that country will not be reduced to scarcity." In addition, however, to this very lucid explanation, it may be added, that it might become necessary to grant licences to trade directly (with the consent of our allies) to the Russian ports. That on the part of British vessels, the