I have talked of the belligerent right of seizure. But civilised nations, recognising that in the most elementary statement of the case not all neutral cargoes even with an enemy destination are liable to seizure, have realised the necessity of establishing a tribunal by which this question of liability and consequent confiscation can be decided. With the right of some cargoes to escape there came into being at once the duty of withdrawing the decision from the summary process which the sailor would inevitably adopt. The question of liability might be a complicated one of fact: law might be involved: a Court was essential. But as to its constitution there were only three alternatives: enemy judges, obviously impossible; neutral judges, or an international Court, not very practicable; there remained nothing but judges of the belligerent country. Hence the anomaly of the Prize Court sitting in the seizing country’s territory, presided over by judges of that country. An anomaly, because it is contrary to the elementary rule that no man shall be a judge in his own cause; yet the judgment of a Prize Court is a judgment _in rem_; it passes property, and is accepted as binding against all the world by the Courts of all other countries. There have been in the past complaints of the decisions; sometimes they have been followed by diplomatic representations. But in these times when--I imagine for the first time in history--a civilised Government has been deliberately charged with having recourse to lying, it surely is a bright spot in the international horizon to think that the system of Prize Courts has produced judges who, as the world has recognised, have been among the greatest. * * * * * But the detention of neutral ships at sea, and the seizure of the contraband that they carry to the enemy, can be put much higher than a mere belligerent right; nor does it spring solely from the vindictive principle that the neutral aiding the enemy becomes an enemy; it is based on the supreme right of self-defence. It is the inevitable counterpoise to the right of the neutral merchant to continue trading, even in contraband, in spite of war. The importance of this trading right to the neutral merchant is the measure of the importance of this defensive right to the belligerent.