belligerent would in that case have no right to search. Great Britain
replied that the right of search rested upon longstanding common
consent, and precedent, and that it could not be taken from her
against her will by any process instituted by another state. The
Danish ships of war being instructed to use force against search, two
hostile collisions followed, in one of which several men were killed
and wounded, and the Danish frigate was taken into a British
port--though afterwards released.

The latter of these conflicts occurred in July, 1800. Great Britain
then sent an ambassador to Denmark, backing him with a fleet of nine
ships-of-the-line, with bomb-vessels; and at the end of August a
convention was signed, by which the general subject was referred to
future discussion, but Denmark agreed for the time to discontinue her
convoys. The importance of the subject to Great Britain was twofold.
First, by having the right to seize enemy's property in neutral ships,
she suppressed a great part of the commerce which France could carry
on, thus crippling her financially; and, second, by capturing articles
of shipbuilding as contraband of war, she kept from the French
materials essential to the maintenance of their navy, which their own
country did not produce. British statesmen of all parties maintained
that in these contentions there was at stake, not an empty and
offensive privilege, but a right vital to self-defence, to the
effective maintenance of which the power to search was fundamentally
necessary.

In 1800 the Czar Paul I. had become bitterly hostile to Austria and
Great Britain. This feeling had its origin in the disasters of the
campaign of 1799, and was brought to a climax by the refusal of Great
Britain to yield Malta to him, as Grand Master of the Order, after its