Before agreeing with the United States as to the ‘Three Rules’ which, as I have pointed out,[24] deal solely with ‘foreign enlistment,’ the British Government declared that they could not assent to the contention that those rules were a statement of principles of international law in force at the time when the _Alabama_ claims arose. This is expressly stated in Article 6 of the Treaty of Washington. ‘Historicus,’ in one of his Letters,[25] cites some American authorities which bear out this view. Further, he explains the true inwardness of the Foreign Enlistment Act:-- The Enlistment Act is directed, not against the _animus vendendi_, but against the _animus belligerendi_. It prohibits warlike enterprise, but it does not interfere with commercial adventure. A subject of the Crown may sell a ship of war, as he may sell a musket, to either belligerent with impunity; nay, he may even despatch it for sale to the belligerent port. But he may not take part in the overt act of making war upon a people with whom his Sovereign is at peace. The purview of the Foreign Enlistment Act is to prohibit a breach of allegiance on the part of the subject against his own Sovereign, not to prevent transactions in contraband with the belligerent. Its object is to prohibit private war, and not to restrain private commerce. It is only when it has become the subject of agreement between two or more States that ‘foreign enlistment’ assumes an international as well as a municipal character. I presume that this municipal character has not been lost by the inclusion of the duty to prevent the fitting out or arming of vessels in Article 8 of the Hague Convention, No. 13, of 1907, relating to the duties of Neutral Powers in Maritime War. As to the Proclamations of Neutrality, so much as recites and reinforces the Foreign Enlistment Act need not trouble us; the King’s loving subjects are exhorted to comply therewith. The rest of the Proclamations amounts to no more than a warning to subjects not to do ‘any acts in derogation of their duty as subjects of a neutral Power in a war between other Powers, or in violation or contravention of the law of nations in that behalf’; but, as ‘Historicus’ says,[26] ‘The nature of the penalty is pointed out with equal clearness and correctness--_viz._ the withdrawal of the King’s protection from the contraband on its road to the enemy, and an abandonment of the subject to the operation of belligerent rights.’ What those belligerent rights are I have endeavoured to explain. II _THE NEUTRAL MERCHANT AND THE ‘FREEDOM OF THE SEA’_ [_August 1915_]