sea-power by which both rights are enforced. So we get to this result: that when there is a cordon of cruisers the belligerent may seize anything, but when there are only isolated ships he may only seize contraband of war. This test ceases to be rudimentary when we introduce another factor common to the two subjects--effectiveness. That the belligerent’s naval dispositions must be capable of doing what he proposes to do--in other words, must be effective to that end--is no less a feature of the law of contraband than it is of blockade. Carrying contraband of war and blockade-running are not offences; the evil consequences, which authors insist on calling ‘penalty,’ result from capture. Therefore in both cases what the belligerent _may_ do is only qualified by what he _can_ do. That sub-conscious recognition of the possibility that a belligerent may put far greater impediments in the way of neutral communications with his enemy than is implied in the law of contraband, becomes now the conscious principle which I gave in outline in the first article: that ‘contraband of war’ and ‘blockade’ are identical in principle; that they are merely convenient names given to varying exhibitions of sea-power against the enemy, and the consequences, to enemy and neutral merchant alike, do in fact depend on and vary with the force exhibited--that is, with the number and position of the ships employed upon the service, which, if effectively performed, results in both cases in seizure and condemnation. Blockade in principle is, therefore, nothing more than an indefinite extension of the list of contraband of war, subject only to the requirement that a sufficient number of ships should be placed in such a position as to make this extended threat of seizure effective. This then is practically what the Order in Council does; and even if it insisted on condemnation in all cases it would be justified, for it satisfies the test which this analysis shows to be the true test, and the only test, that the ships employed upon the service, both as regards number and position, shall be effective for its due performance.