CO885-(11-13) — Page 207

SIR,

No. 1.

(BRITISH HONDURAS.)

FOREIGN OFFICE to COLONIAL OFFICE.

Foreign Office, 2nd January 1874.

AM directed by Earl Granville to state to you that your letter of the 4th ultimo on the subject of the export of arms, &c. from British Honduras was referred to the Law Officers of the Crown, and his Lordship is now advised that the objection to the Proclamation of the Governor of British Honduras, in its present form, is not one which touches its legality, but which affects its policy.

The Government of any country may legally forbid the exportation of any commodity to any or to all places, whether for any special reason, or without giving any reason. Such a power belongs essentially to its Sovereign right,

There is nothing therefore illegal in the form of the Proclamation itself. Such proclamations were frequently issued by Order in Council in England in former times. But, as a matter of policy, it has not been thought fit in recent times to treat the prohibition of the exportation of arms to belligerent States as one of the ordinary obligations of neutral Powers. The real objection to the form of the Proclamation is that it appears to assume that the exportation is, and ought to be, prohibited to a belligerent country, because it is a part of the duty of neutrality so to prohibit it in this special case, and to a particular destination.

This would furnish an inconvenient precedent in the future, and might be appealed to as an argument for pressing on the English Government, by its own example, a policy which it has repeatedly—and Lord Granville thinks, wisely-declined to adopt. Her Majesty's Government would be doing in Honduras what they have refused to do in France and in the United States.

They would be supplying, out of their own armoury, weapons to those who in the future may make demands upon them similar to those urged by Prince Bismarck and Mr. Seward.

This, it appears to Lord Granville, would be inconsistent and unwise; his Lordship would therefore recommend that the Proclamation should be general in its terms, that it should not be confined to exportation to any particular country, and that it should not refer at all to the relations of belligerents and neutrals.

Lord Granville sees no objection to the provision that the Governor may permit the exportation under a license from himself, but this power should be most carefully guarded.

The Under Secretary of State,

Colonial Office.

am, &c..

(Signed)

TENTERDEN.

a 12916.-3. 25-12/84.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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CO. 885

Reference :-

12 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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