The right of search might be looked on as a concession, or an infringement of jurisdiction, in the case of ships not carrying contraband. Yet even this does not bear analysis; for, as ‘Historicus’ points out, ‘when a trade in contraband is notoriously and extensively carried on, it exposes the innocent as well as the guilty to suspicion and search, and this is precisely why the Queen in her proclamation of neutrality exhorts her subjects to abstain from such a trade.’[45] The proclamation in fact admits that this search of _all_ vessels on suspicion is an integral and inevitable part of the right of search. It is not a concession, but only the logical extension of the belligerent right to capture contraband on neutral vessels, and to take all steps necessary to attain that end. It is a part of the belligerent right. This question does not arise in connexion with blockade, for there there is no search, and all things become contraband of war. _The Doctrine of ‘Continuous Voyages’ and the Order in Council_ But although I have been obliged to devote great space to these preliminary subjects, the point of the Protest is still to come. The condition attached by the United States to its theory of the ‘long-distance blockade’ is that free admission and exit must be accorded ‘to all lawful traffic with neutral ports through the blockading cordon.’ ‘Lawful traffic,’ it is explained, ‘would of course include all outward-bound traffic from the neutral country, and all inward-bound traffic to the neutral country except contraband in transit to the enemy.’ This must be read with a sentence which occurs earlier in the Protest:-- It is confidently assumed that His Majesty’s Government will not deny at once [_i.e._ presumably, ‘will at once admit’] that it is a rule sanctioned by general practice that, even though a blockade should exist and the doctrine of contraband as to blockaded territory be rigidly enforced, _innocent shipments may be freely transported to and from the United States through neutral countries to belligerent territory_ without being subject to the penalties of contraband traffic or breach of blockade, much less to detention, requisition, or confiscation.