This statement, made in the words of eminent British jurists, shows at once that the English claim is far broader than the basis or platform on which it is raised.  The law relied on is English law; the obligations insisted on are obligations existing between the crown of England and its subjects.  This law and these obligations, it is admitted, may be such as England may choose they shall be.  But then they must be confined to the parties.  Impressment of seamen out of and beyond English territory, and from on board the ships of other nations, is an interference with the rights of other nations; is further, therefore, than English prerogative can legally extend; and is nothing but an attempt to enforce the peculiar law of England beyond the dominions and jurisdiction of the crown.  The claim asserts an extra-territorial authority for the law of British prerogative, and assumes to exercise this extra-territorial authority, to the manifest injury and annoyance of the citizens and subjects of other states, on board their own vessels, on the high seas.

Every merchant-vessel on the seas is rightfully considered as part of the territory of the country to which it belongs.  The entry, therefore, into such vessel, being neutral, by a belligerent, is an act of force, and is, prima facie, a wrong, a trespass, which can be justified only when done for some purpose allowed to form a sufficient justification by the law of nations.  But a British cruiser enters an American merchant-vessel in order to take therefrom supposed British subjects; offering no justification, therefore, under the law of nations, but claiming the right under the law of England respecting the king’s prerogative.  This cannot be defended.  English soil, English territory, English jurisdiction, is the appropriate sphere for the operation of English law.  The ocean is the sphere of the law of nations; and any merchant-vessel on the seas is by that law under the protection of the laws of her own nation, and may claim immunity, unless in cases in which that law allows her to be entered or visited.

If this notion of perpetual allegiance, and the consequent power of the prerogative, was the law of the world; if it formed part of the conventional code of nations, and was usually practised, like the right of visiting neutral ships, for the purpose of discovering and seizing enemy’s property, then impressment might be defended as a common right, and there would be no remedy for the evil till the national code should be altered.  But this is by no means the case.  There is no such principle incorporated into the code of nations.  The doctrine stands only as English law, not as a national law; and English law cannot be of force beyond English dominion.  Whatever duties or relations that law creates between the sovereign and his subjects can be enforced and maintained only within the realm, or proper possessions or territory of the sovereign.  There may be quite as just a prerogative right to the