Want of energy on the part of the English Foreign Office. demanded that our Shipowners should, as far as practicable and consistent with the interests of the community, be placed on equal terms in the race of competition, and that, whatever difficulties might stand in the way of having recourse to retaliatory measures, there had been, they regretted to state, an apparent apathy on the part of the executive government, in remonstrating with those nations which then excluded our vessels from their trade; in other words, that the Foreign Office had not employed the influence it might have exercised to secure, by diplomatic negotiation, the advantages of reciprocity.
Rights of belligerents. As the question of belligerent rights at sea was one which deeply affected alike the British Shipowner in the prosecution of his business and the general interests of Great Britain, the Committee devoted their especial attention to the evidence advanced on this important question.
Privateering abolished in Europe; In the recent war with Russia, England, as we have already incidentally noticed, when she formed an alliance with France, agreed with that country to waive her right to confiscate an enemy's goods on board neutral ships as also neutral goods found on board an enemy's, so long as they were not, in either case, contraband of war. This mutual but provisional waiver of belligerent rights placed the allies in harmonious action, and, practically, countenanced the principle that "free ships make free goods." Upon the return of peace, as I have explained in a previous portion of this work, the declaration of Paris of April, 1856, signed by Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey gave a formal sanction to this principle. Privateering was also abolished.
