against the right itself.  If abuses occur, we can get them remedied by proper representations; and, if these last fail, we have the usual appeal of nations.  As well might it be said, the law of the land shall not be administered, because the sheriff’s officers are guilty of abuses, as to say the law of nations shall cease because we apprehend that certain commercial rivalries may induce others to transcend them.  When the wrong is done, it will be time enough to seek the remedy.

That it is the right of a vessel of war to ascertain the character of a ship at sea, is dependent on her right to arrest a pirate, for instance.  In what manner can this be done, if a pirate can obtain impunity, by simply hoisting the flag of some other country, which the cruiser is obliged to respect?  All that the latter asks is the power to ascertain if that flag is not an imposition; and this much every regularly commissioned public ship should be permitted to do, in the interests of civilization, and in maintenance of the police of the seas.

The argument on the other side goes the length of saying, that a public cruiser is in the situation of a sheriff’s officer on shore, who is compelled to arrest his prisoner on his own responsibility.  In the first place, it may be questioned if the dogma of the common law which asserts the privilege of the citizen to conceal his name, is worthy of a truly enlightened political freedom.  It must not be forgotten that liberty first took the aspect of franchises, in which men sought protection from the abuses of power in any manner they could, and often without regarding the justness of the general principles with which they were connected; confusion in these principles arising as a consequence.  But, admitting the dogma of the common law to be as inherently wise, as it is confessedly a practice, there is no parallel in the necessity of the case of an arrest on shore and of an arrest at sea.  In the former instance the officer may apply to witnesses;—­he has the man before him, and compares him with the description of the criminal; and, should he make an erroneous arrest, under misleading circumstances, his punishment would be merely nominal—­in many cases, nothing.  But the common law, whilst it gives the subject this protection, does not deny the right of the officer to arrest.  It only punishes the abuse of this power, and that is precisely what nations ought to do, in a case of the abuse of the right to examine a merchantman.

The vessel of war cannot apply to witnesses, and cannot judge of national character by mere external appearances, since an American-built ship can be sailed by Portuguese.  The actual necessities of the case are in favour of the present English claim, as well as that great governing principle, which says that no great or principal right can exist, in international law, without carrying with it all the subordinate privileges which are necessary to its discreet exercise.