If such well-known distinction exists, where are the proofs of it?  What writers of authority on public law, what adjudications in courts of admiralty, what public treaties, recognize it?  No such recognition has presented itself to the government of the United States; but, on the contrary, it understands that public writers, courts of law, and solemn treaties have, for two centuries, used the words “visit” and “search” in the same sense.  What Great Britain and the United States mean by the “right of search,” in its broadest sense, is called by Continental writers and jurists by no other name than the “right of visit.”  Visit, therefore, as it has been understood, implies not only a right to inquire into the national character, but to detain the vessel, to stop the progress of the voyage, to examine papers, to decide on their regularity and authenticity, and to make inquisition on board for enemy’s property, and into the business which the vessel is engaged in.  In other words, it describes the entire right of belligerent visitation and search.  Such a right is justly disclaimed by the British government in time of peace.  They, nevertheless, insist on a right which they denominate a right of visit, and by that word describe the claim which they assert.  It is proper, and due to the importance and delicacy of the questions involved, to take care that, in discussing them, both governments understand the terms which may be used in the same sense.  If, indeed, it should be manifest that the difference between the parties is only verbal, it might be hoped that no harm would be done; but the government of the United States thinks itself not justly chargeable with excessive jealousy, or with too great scrupulosity in the use of words, in insisting on its opinion that there is no such distinction as the British government maintains between visit and search; and that there is no right to visit in time of peace, except in the execution of revenue laws or other municipal regulations, in which cases the right is usually exercised near the coast, or within the marine league, or where the vessel is justly suspected of violating the law of nations by piratical aggression; but, wherever exercised, it is a right of search.

Nor can the United States government agree that the term “right” is justly applied to such exercise of power as the British government thinks it indispensable to maintain in certain cases.  The right asserted is a right to ascertain whether a merchant-vessel is justly entitled to the protection of the flag which she may happen to have hoisted, such vessel being in circumstances which render her liable to the suspicion, first, that she is not entitled to the protection of the flag; and secondly, that, if not entitled to it, she is, either by the law of England, as an English vessel, or under the provisions of treaties with certain European powers, subject to the supervision and search of British cruisers.  And yet Lord Aberdeen says, “that if, in the exercise of this right, either from involuntary error, or in spite of every precaution, loss or injury should be sustained, a prompt reparation would be afforded.”