In view of this inoffensive character of prize money in England it is not surprising that it remains law. Sailors and naval officers want to keep it. The institution is long established in custom by which the English are proverbially bound. Unless a definite charge can be brought against it, it does not seem likely that the present practice will be abolished. England's stand at the Hague conference of 1907 seemed to indicate this attitude. On that occasion a proposition was introduced by the French delegation to abolish prize money.[12] It was offered as a substitute to the American plan of abolishing the right to capture private property at sea. Great Britain opposed the scheme. Sir Ernest Satow, the British delegate, said that England could not agree to the proposition as the English parliament had reasons for believing in their present custom of distribution. The reasons, he did not give. He added that he considered the matter as being one solely for internal settlement and not one of international law.[13] We may therefore expect prize money to remain as an institution of British policy, though its influence on international law seems to be very slight.
On theoretical grounds the practice seems to have little basis for existing. It is not in harmony with the modern view of war which seeks so far as possible to eliminate the element of personal gain and to limit the operations of war to strictly state agencies. It encourages war on commerce. Its use savors of privateering. It offers a constant temptation for infringing neutral rights by making illegal captures. With the abolition of privateering and the present views of naval strategy its usefulness as an encouragement for seamen and a means of increasing the efficiency of the navy have departed. It accentuates the gambler's chance which is contrary to all modern ethics. Sailors, the same as soldiers, should receive fixed pay for their services, and not be compelled to rely for their salaries, in part at least, upon the uncertain chance of prize money. Bentwich says of prize money: "The present custom of dividing among the captors the proceeds of sale after adjudication of a prize court preserves in maritime war that taint of belligerent greed and of interested attack upon private property which is against the spirit of modern warfare and which has been declared illegal in land operations."[14]
Though prize money as given in England was an institution of great international importance in the balmy days of privateering especially during the reign of Elizabeth when it was largely responsible for the romantic careers of England's empire builders, for the wholesale capture of Spanish galleons and for England's naval supremacy, it does not seem to have been of any particular importance to any one outside of the naval service of Great Britain since the abolition of privateering. Practically it is valueless. Theoretically it is bad. It should be abolished.
NOTES.
Chapter VI, Part 2.
[1] Common Law fully admits the legality of pressing sailors into service, see Blackstone, I, 419.
[2] Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 132-138; Lord Palmerstone also deprecated the value of commercial war, Political Science Quarterly, 1905, xx, 711.
[3] Atherley-Jones, op. cit. 529, 534.
[4] Atherley-Jones, op. cit. 530.