permission to France to do it?  Does the negative to the enemies of France, and silence as to France herself, imply an affirmative to France?  Certainly not; it leaves the question as to France open, and free to be decided according to circumstances.  And if the parties had meant an affirmative stipulation, they would have provided for it expressly; they would never have left so important a point to be inferred from mere silence or implications.  Suppose they had desired to stipulate a refusal to their enemies, but nothing to themselves; what form of expression would they have used?  Certainly the one they have used; an express stipulation as to their enemies, and silence as to themselves.  And such an intention corresponds not only with the words, but with the circumstances of the times.  It was of value to each party to exclude its enemies from arming in the ports of the other, and could in no case embarrass them.  They therefore stipulated so far mutually.  But each might be embarrassed by permitting the other to arm in its ports.  They therefore would not stipulate to permit that.  Let us go back to the state of things in France when this treaty was made, and we shall find several cases wherein France could not have permitted us to arm in her ports.  Suppose a war between these States and Spain.  We know, that by the treaties between France and Spain, the former could not permit the enemies of the latter to arm in her ports.  It was honest in her, therefore, not to deceive us by such a stipulation.  Suppose a war between these States and Great Britain.  By the treaties between France and Great Britain, in force at the signature of ours, we could not have been permitted to arm in the ports of France.  She could not then have meant in this article to give us such a right.  She has manifested the same sense of it in her subsequent treaty with England, made eight years after the date of ours, stipulating in the sixteenth article of it, as in our twenty-second, that foreign privateers, not being subjects of either crown, should not arm against either in the ports of the other.  If this had amounted to an affirmative stipulation that the subjects of the other crown might arm in her ports against us, it would have been in direct contradiction to her twenty-second article with us.  So that to give to these negative stipulations an affirmative effect, is to render them inconsistent with each other, and with good faith; to give them only their negative and natural effect, is to reconcile them to one another and to good faith, and is clearly to adopt the sense in which France herself has expounded them.  We may justly conclude then, that the article only obliges us to refuse this right, in the present case, to Great Britain and the other enemies of France.  It does not go on to give it to France, either expressly or by implication.  We may then refuse it.  And since we are bound by treaty to refuse it to the one party, and are free to refuse it to the other, we are bound by the laws of neutrality to refuse it to that other.  The aiding either party then with vessels, arms, or men, being unlawful by the law of nations, and not rendered lawful by the treaty, it is made a question whether our citizens, joining in these unlawful enterprises, may be punished.