Establishment of Neutrality by Declarations.
§ 309. Neutrality being an attitude of States creating rights and duties, active measures on the part of a neutral state are required for the purpose of preventing its officials and subjects from committing acts incompatible with its duty of impartiality. Now, the manifesto by which a neutral State orders its organs and subjects to comply with the attitude of impartiality adopted by itself is called a declaration of neutrality in the special sense of the term. Such declaration of neutrality must not, however, be confounded, on the one hand, with manifestoes of the belligerents proclaiming to neutrals the rights and duties devolving upon them through neutrality, or, on the other hand, with the assertions made by neutrals to belligerents or urbi et orbi that they will remain neutral, although these manifestoes and assertions are often also called declarations of neutrality.[575]
Municipal Neutrality Laws.
§ 310. International Law leaves the provision of necessary measures for the establishment of neutrality to the discretion of each State. Since in constitutional States the powers of Governments are frequently so limited by Municipal Law that they may not take adequate measures without the consent of their Parliaments, and since it is, so far as International Law is concerned, no excuse for a Government if it is by its Municipal Law prevented from taking adequate measures, several States have once for all enacted so-called Neutrality Laws, which prescribe the attitude to be taken up by their officials and subjects in case the States concerned remain neutral in a war. These Neutrality Laws are latent in time of peace, but their provisions become operative ipso facto by the respective States making a declaration of neutrality to their officials and subjects.
British Foreign Enlistment Act.
§ 311. After the United States of America had on April 20, 1818, enacted[576] a Neutrality Law, Great Britain followed the example in 1819 with her Foreign Enlistment Act,[577] which was in force till 1870. As this Act did not give adequate powers to the Government, Parliament passed on August 9, 1870, a new Foreign Enlistment Act,[578] which is still in force. This Act, in the event of British neutrality, prohibits—(1) The enlistment by a British subject in the military or naval service of either belligerent, and similar acts (sections 4-7); (2) the building, equipping,[579] and despatching[580] of vessels for employment in the military or naval service of either belligerent (sections 8-9); (3) the increase, on the part of any individual living on British territory, of the armament of a man-of-war of either belligerent being at the time in a British port (section 10); (4) the preparing or fitting out of a naval or military expedition against a friendly State (section 11).
[576] Printed in Phillimore, I. pp. 667-672.
[577] 59 Geo. III. c. 69.
[578] 33 and 34 Vict. c. 90. See Sibley in the Law Magazine and Review, XXIX. (1904), pp. 453-464, and XXX. (1905), pp. 37-53.