Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/131

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IMMUNITY OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.
117

analogy. It is said that private property is spared on land in war, and therefore it ought to be spared at sea. I will not stop to dispute the fact, although it would scarcely be beside the question to ask whether the villas and gardens around Paris were spared by the Prussian army, or the private property of the Southern States by Sherman's troops in his famous march, any more than in Westphalia in the time of Turenne, or in the campaigns of the great Napoleon. But, even if the fact was as the argument audaciously assumes, I answer, the reason would be that there is on land a means of legalized plunder, viz., the local government of the country, of which the invader immediately possesses himself, and thus grasps the taxes and contributions of the people in a way which is impossible at sea; and, if he abstains (which it is quite an assumption to say he does) from indiscriminate plunder, the abstention is in his own interest and for his own benefit as no