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APPENDIX. 503succession. It was first brought forward in the great northern warwhich still continued. That it did not arise during the Spanish war,was owing to the peculiarsituation of the parties in the;west of Europethere were no neutrals, and the eastern powers had enough to do amongstthemselves. Another and a stronger reason was, that Holland, duringthe war, though hostile to France and Spain, still carried on a tolerablyextensive trade with these two countries, which England either couldnot, or would not, hinder. But the trade which the Dutch, as neutrals,carried on in the Baltic, soon brought the matter to a crisis. CharlesXII. refused to recognise the right of neutral flags the Swedish ;privateers captured indiscriminately all vessels bound to ports of the enemy,so that Holland and England were obliged to send, 1715 5 a combinedfleet to the Baltic for the protection of their commerce.On the breaking out of the war between Spain and England in 1739,and the war of the Austrian succession in 1740, in which Holland remained neutral as long as she could, the dispute was again revived.The English having captured a great number of Dutch vessels on theirway to Spain, the latter complained, and appealed expressly to the commercial treaty of 1674, in which England had recognised the principleof " free ship, free cargo," in respect to them ;but nothing of any consequence was settled.No further progress had been made, when, in 1743, the war betweenRussia and Sweden broke out. The latter power again refused to concede to the Dutch the right of neutral flags,and the latter were oncemore compelled to send a fleet to protect their trade in the Baltic.The seven years' war had scarcely broken out, in 1756, before theDutch renewed their old complaints against England. Desirous to turntheir neutral position to account, and that under the protection of theneutral flag they might be allowed to carry on the trade between Franceand her colonies, more especially the West Indies, the latter again appealed to the commercial treaty of 1674. But the English, admitting theirclaims just as little as before, made prizes of their merchantmen wheneverthey found them bound to an enemy's port, or laden with an enemy's goods.Thus matters went on till the breaking out of the American war.During its course the complaints about the oppression of neutral shipping became again very loud. An armed neutrality was negotiated in1780, by Catharine II., the basis of which was the maxim, "free $Mp,free cargo! 1 England certainly did not formally recognise this principle but she ; tacitly submitted to it, as she felt herself obliged to succumb to the circumstances of the time.This survey, we think, will make it quite clear that this principle wasvery far from having been ever generally recognised in the course of thewar by tacit agreement, though it certainly was, once and again, byseparate treaties between individual powers, but concluded, for the mostpart, in time of peace. Busck, in his Geschichte der Zerriitung des Seehandels,(History of the Obstructions to Maritime Commerce,) has takenthe trouble to enumerate these singly, and has found thirty-six treatiesfor, and only fifteen against, this principle. But what remedies did thesetreaties provide ? No sooner did a war break out than the nations whohad contracted them felt themselves at liberty to violate their obligations, and made such partial arrangements as suited their own interest.This was done, not only by England, but by most of the other states,