ship-building in British yards. The
_intention_ of the British Government is of greater importance in this
study than the correctness of its action.

Yet it must first be understood that the whole question of a
belligerent's right to procure ships of war or to build them in the
ports of neutral nations was, in 1860, still lacking definite
application in international law. There were general principles already
established that the neutral must not do, nor permit its subjects to do,
anything directly in aid of belligerents. The British Foreign Enlistment
Act, notification of which had been given in May, 1861, forbade subjects
to "be concerned in the equipping, furnishing, fitting out, or arming,
of any ship or vessel, with intent or in order that such ship or vessel
shall be employed in the service ..." of a belligerent, and provided for
punishment of individuals and forfeiture of vessels if this prohibition
were disobeyed. But the Act also declared that such punishment, or
seizure, would follow on due proof of the offence. Here was the weak
point of the Act, for in effect if secrecy were maintained by offenders
the proof was available only after the offence had been committed and
one of the belligerents injured by the violation of the law. Over twenty
years earlier the American Government, seeking to prevent its subjects
from committing unneutral acts in connection with the Canadian rebellion
of 1837, had realized the weakness of its neutrality laws as they then
stood, and by a new law of March 10, 1838, hastily passed and therefore
limited to two years' duration, in the expectation of a more perfect
law, but intended as a clearer exposition of neutral duty, had given
federal officials power to act and seize _on suspicion_, leaving the
proof of guilt or innocence to be determined later. But the British
interpretation of her own neutrality laws was that proof was required in
advance of seizure--an interpretation wholly in line with the basic
principle that a man was innocent until proved guilty, but fatal to that
preservation of strict neutrality which Great Britain had so promptly
asserted at the beginning of the Civil War[966].

The South wholly lacking a navy or the means to create one, early
conceived the idea of using neutral ports for the construction of war
vessels. Advice secured from able British lawyers was to the effect that
if care were taken to observe the strict letter of the Foreign
Enlistment Act, by avoi