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