If the course pursued by the present enemies of Great Britain should prove to be in fact tainted by illegality and disregard of the principles of war sanctioned by enlightened nations, it cannot be supposed, and the Government does not for a moment suppose, that His Majesty’s Government would wish the same taint to attach to their own actions, or would cite such illegal acts as in any sense or degree a justification for similar practices on their part in so far as they affect neutral rights. A comparison of the measures taken by the Order in Council with those ordered by the German Admiralty can hardly have been seriously intended; yet to many this sentence seemed to be straining diplomatic proprieties to their utmost limit. But any irritation it may have caused has been blotted out by the stern words of disapproval used by the President in his recent Notes to Germany. But the reference to retaliation cannot, as it seems to me, be legitimately construed into an admission of the illegality of the measures decreed by the Order in Council. The utmost that can be said of it is that it admits they are exceptional. The Order of 1807 declared that ‘no vessel shall be permitted to trade from one port to another, both French,’ and it was enforced by seizure and confiscation of neutral vessels which disregarded it. That and the other Orders which countered Napoleon’s paper blockade of the English coasts have been severely criticised; but it is impossible to apply the same criticism to an Order which omits the confiscation, and on the contrary, expressly provides for the return of both ship and cargo to the neutral merchant. That the measures are exceptional may be freely admitted, and to that extent they may be called reprisals; but exceptional measures, even of reprisal, are not necessarily illegal measures. _The American Caveat_