American Eloquence, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 227 pages of information about American Eloquence, Volume 1.

American Eloquence, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 227 pages of information about American Eloquence, Volume 1.
ourselves against sea aggressions, that this provision is necessary.  Spoliations may arise from unjust orders, given by the government of a belligerent nation to their officers and cruisers, and these may be redressed by application to and negotiation with that order.  But no complaints, no negotiations, no orders of government itself, can give redress when those spoliations are grounded on a supposition, that the vessels of the neutral nation have an enemy’s property on board, as long as such property is not protected by the flag of the neutral nation; as long as it is liable to be captured, it is not sufficient, in order to avoid detention and capture, to have no such property on board.  Every privateer, under pretence that he suspects an enemy’s goods to be part of a cargo, may search, vex, and capture a vessel; and if in any corner of the dominions of the belligerent power, a single judge can be found inclined, if not determined, to condemn, at all events, before his tribunal, all vessels so captured will be brought there, and the same pretence which caused the capture will justify a condemnation.  The only nation who persists in the support of this doctrine, as making part of the law of nations, is the first maritime power of Europe, whom their interest, as they are the strongest, and as there is hardly a maritime war in which they are not involved, leads to wish for a continuation of a custom which gives additional strength to their overbearing dominion over the seas.  All the other nations have different sentiments and a different interest.  During the American war, in the year 1780, so fully convinced were the neutral nations of the necessity of introducing that doctrine of free bottoms making free goods, that all of them, excepting Portugal, who was in a state of vassalage to, and a mere appendage of, Great Britain, united in order to establish the principle, and formed for that purpose the alliance known by the name of the armed neutrality.  All the belligerent powers, except England, recognized and agreed to the doctrine.  England itself was obliged, in some measure, to give, for a while, a tacit acquiescence.  America, at the time, fully admitted the principle, although then at war.

Since the year 1780, every nation, so far as my knowledge goes, has refused to enter into a treaty of commerce with England, unless that provision was inserted.  Russia, for that reason, would not renew their treaty, which had expired in 1786; although I believe that, during the present war, and in order to answer the ends of the war, they formed a temporary convention, which I have not seen, but which, perhaps, does not include that provision.  England consented to it in her treaty with France, in 1788, and we are the first neutral nation who has abandoned the common cause, given up the claim, and by a positive declaration inserted in our treaty, recognized the contrary doctrine.  It has been said that, under the present circumstances, it could not be expected that Great Britain would

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American Eloquence, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.