This, if your honors please, seems to me an answer to the doctrine put forward in this case, that the Judges are to treat this question in reference to the seceding States as it has been viewed by the executive and legislative branches of the Government. If it be true that when a state of civil war exists, as stated by Wheaton, both the contending parties have all the rights of war as against each other, as well as against neutral nations, then it follows very clearly that the seceding States, as well as our own, have all the rights of war; and there is no such rule as that they must have those rights determined only by the executive or legislative branches of the Government, or by both. And here, gentlemen, let us refer to the matter of blockade, which I take to be the highest evidence of a distinct recognition, by the General Government, of a state of war as between the United and the Confederate States. I see no escape from that conclusion. It is true that a learned Judge in New England, an eminent and pure man, has determined, as we see from the newspapers, that in his judgment it is not a blockade which exists, but merely the exercise by the General Government of its authority over commerce and territory in a state of insurrection--that it is a mere police or municipal regulation. Well, gentlemen, that is not the view taken by the Judges elsewhere. Certainly it is not adopted in this District, where prize cases have arisen, instituted by the Government, which calls this a blockade; and I undertake to say that, in the history of the human race, that word, blockade, never was applied except in a state of war; and the exercise of that power never can occur except in a state of war, because, as the writers inform us, blockade is the right of a belligerent _affecting a neutral, and_ ONLY ALLOWABLE IN A STATE OF WAR. Why is it that France and England and all the other countries of the world do not attempt to send their vessels to any of the ports in guard of which we place armed vessels?