If, at a future period, a serious attempt should be made by a coalition or in any other way to remedy this evil, it would be highly expedient to strike at the root of it and not to stop at the very unsatisfactory point, at which the coalition of the armed neutrality fixed their pretensions. Supposing even that the private property of enemies were exempted from pillage in the hands of third persons, the pretended right of search would still involve many great and serious inconveniences; and it is not less the dictate of consistency and good sense, than of civilization and common humanity, to remove the source of these mischiefs and at the same time introduce a most important improvement in the law of nations, by abolishing wholly the practice of plundering the private property of enemies at sea. The acknowledged basis of the law of nations is the great and universal law of nature; and is it to be endured, that this sacred oracle shall be made to say one thing here and another two or three miles off, so it be upon a different element? What says the illustrious Roman orator of this very law of nature in the well known fragment of the Republic? Nec erit alia lex Romæ, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac; sed et omnes gentes et omni tempore una lex et sempiterna et immortalis continebit. Such were the lights upon this subject nearly two

thousand years ago of one whom we dignify with the titles of pagan and heathen; and with all our christianity and civilization, we have since brought the law of nations to such a point of perfection and consistency, that it shall pronounce the same act in the same place to be highway robbery at low tide, and fair war at full sea. One would think the civilians must be lunatic themselves to make an action change its character from right to wrong four times in every twenty four hours, without any other change of circumstances than the ebb and flow of the tide in the place where it was committed; yet such, according to the present law of nations, is literally the fact. The plunder of private property belonging to enemies by an armed force on a beach would be against the law of nations, and generally punishable with death; while the same act, performed by a ship of war at the same place when covered with water at high tide, would be agreeable to usage and public law. While we are going back to antiquity in search of authorities on the law of nature and nations, would it not be as well for the honour of common sense, if not of humanity, to pass over the age of the crusades, when the nameless, I had almost said shameless compilations, so often appealed to in maritime

courts, were collected, and ascend to the time of Cicero ?

All these questions still remain open between Great Britain and the United States; and as the attempts, subsequent to the war, to obtain from the former a renunciation of even the most odious of her pretensions have failed, there is every reason to suppose, that they will be renewed at the next opportunity; and that the United States will be driven to the necessity of taking part in every future war with the enemies of Great Britain, whoever they may be. The claims of the United States as a neutral power have hitherto been extremely moderate. They acquiesced in the

principle, that enemy's property on board of neutral ships is good prize, and in the pretended rule of 1756. Their uniform effort on these points was not to oppose the British construction of natural law, but rather to ascertain, if possible, what it was, that they might conform to it. Even in this they were never able to succeed; and it happened

repeatedly, that after the admiralty courts had settled a principle, and our merchants, in conformity with it, had covered the sea with their property, an order of council proclaimed a directly opposite one, and the wealth thus confided to the faith of England was swept from the ocean. It was only the

wholly unauthorized practice of impressment on board of neutral ships; and the last unwarrantable pretension to a right of interdicting all commerce with an enemy under pretence of blockading his coasts, that the United States firmly resisted in principle. In the moderate and limited extent given to their propositions, this government has, however, consulted the spirit of the British cabinet, and not its own wishes and policy. Its uniform desire, on the contrary, has always been to give the greatest possible latitude to neutral rights, and to mitigate, by every imaginable means the horrors of war; and this government even had the glory, by one of its early acts of sovereignty, of setting the world the example of an abolition by treaty of the practice of plundering private property in time of war, whether by land or sea. I cannot refuse myself the satisfaction of quoting the article containing this provision, from the treaty concluded between the United States and Prussia in the year 1785, as well for the purpose of doing honour to the nations that authorized and the illustrious statesmen who negotiated it, as of giving the sanction of two powerful governments and of some of the greatest names which the last and present century can boast, to the sentiments I have ventured to express on the subject. The treaty is signed on the

American side by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THOMAS JEFFERSON, and JOHN ADAMS; and, as far as I am informed, is the only one ever concluded, which contains a provision similar to that below in italics. The twenty third article is conceived in the following terms:

"If war should arise between the two contracting parties, the merchants of either country, then residing in the other, shall be allowed to remain nine months to collect their debts and settle their affairs; and may depart freely, carrying off all their effects without molestation or hindrance; and all women and children, scholars of every faculty, cultivators of the earth, artisans, manufacturers and fishermen, unarmed and inhabiting unfortified towns, villages, and places, and in general, all others, whose occupations are for the common subsistence and benefit of mankind, shall be allowed to continue their respective employments, and shall not be molested in their persons; nor shall their houses or goods be burned or otherwise destroyed, nor their fields wasted by the armed force of the enemy, into whose power, by the events of war, they may happen to fall; but if any thing is necessary to be taken for the use of such armed force, the same shall be paid for at a reasonable price. And all merchant and trading vessels employed in exchanging the products