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 WAR IN DISGUISE; 
 
 ■So 
 
 ■ *k 
 
 OR, 
 
 
 5 
 
 ^ 
 
 THE FRAUDS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEUTRAL FLAGS. 
 
 LONDON, Printed : 
 
 NEW-YORK: Re-printed by Hopkins W Seymour, 
 
 FOR I. RILEY AND CO. NEW-YORK, AND SAMUEL F. BRADFOFD. 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 January, 1806. 
 
 62 9 6 1*
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE LONDON ED ITIOjY. 
 
 J_ HOUGH the following sheets have been written 
 and sent to press in considerable haste, on account of 
 some temporary considerations which add to the im- 
 mediate importance of their subject, the author has 
 spared no pains that, could tend to guard his state- 
 : ments from, mistake. His facts are for the most 
 part, derived, as the reader will perceive, from those 
 authentic and original sources of information, the 
 records of our courts of prize : and it may therefore 
 perhaps be surmised, that some practitioner in those 
 courts, if not the author of the argument, has at 
 least contributed his aid, in furnishing premises for 
 its use. 
 
 i Adverting to the probability of such a conjecture, 
 
 <js and to an erroneous notion wJiich he knows to be 
 
 S( very prevalent, namely, that the practitioners hi the 
 
 ^\ admiralty courts have an interest opposite to the 
 
 3 

 
 VJ 
 
 pretensions of neutral merchants, he thinks it right 
 to zuarcl both his facts and his opinions against this 
 source of jealousy, by one brief remark — contests in 
 the prize jurisdiction arise almost exclusively from 
 claims of property preferred by neutrals ; and there- 
 fore, the business of the prize courts, would obvious- 
 ly be impaired, not extended, by narrowing the legal 
 confines of the neutral flags. 
 
 If the intelligent reader should stand in no need 
 of this information, he will still feel such caution in 
 an anonymous writer, not to be excessive j for how- 
 ever sacred a national cause may be, it is become 
 too common a rule, to suppose that no man exerts 
 himself in it from a public motive, if a private one- 
 can possibly be suspected. 
 
 October 18th, 1805.
 
 AMERICAN PREFACE. 
 
 XT was intended to have prefixed to this edi- 
 tion, an Introduction of some length, exposing, 
 in a succinct manner, some of the sophistries 
 with which this singular work abounds, byway 
 of putting the reader on his guard against them; 
 but as it is now proposed to follow it shortly 
 with a formal answer, nothing more is thought 
 necessary here, than merely to apprize the 
 reader of this circumstance.
 
 WAR IN DISGUISE, 
 
 8Cc. 
 
 1 HE hope of Peace, which long, though faint- 
 ly, gleamed from the North, has vanished ; the 
 political atmosphere of Europe is become dark- 
 er than ever ; and the storm menaces a wider 
 range, as well as a lengthened duration. 
 
 At such a period, it is natural to cast forward 
 an anxious glance toward the approaching events 
 of war, and to calculate anew the chances of a 
 happy or disastrous issue of this momentous 
 contest : but it is wise also to look backward, 
 to review the plan on which the war has hither- 
 to been conducted, and inquire, whether expe- 
 rience has not proved it to be in some points, 
 erroneous or defective. 
 
 The season seems favourable for improve- 
 ment, especially in our offensive measures, since 
 
 B
 
 2 
 
 new relations will, in all ^probability, demand 
 an important change in them : while the acqui- 
 sition of allies, however powerful and active, 
 will diminish in no degree the duty of putting 
 forth our utmost exertions. 
 
 Fatal might be that assistance in the war, 
 which should lead us to cherish less carefully 
 our own independent means of annoyance or de- 
 fence. The arch enemy of the civilized world, 
 in the prospect of having a new confederacy to 
 contend with, like Satan when opposed to the an- 
 gelic phalanx, is " collecting all his might," and 
 seems to be preparing, for his continental foes 
 at least, an impetuous attack ; nor are their pre- 
 parations of a characrer less decisive 
 
 " One stroke they aim, 
 " That may determine, and not need repeat." 
 
 A single campaign, if disastrous to our allies, 
 may realize some of the late threats of Bona 
 parte. He may " acquire a new line of coast, 
 " new ports, new countries," and then, he fair- 
 ly tells us the consequence — " the defeat of our 
 " confederates would be reflected back upon 
 " ourselves — would leave France more at liber- 
 " ty than ever to turn her whole attention to 
 " her war with this country, and to employ 
 " against us still augmented means of annoy- 
 " ance;" it would render our dangers, as he 
 truly says, " more imminent," though, I trust, he
 
 is mistaken in the insulting conclusion, that it 
 would " ensure our fall *." 
 
 The plan which this exasperated enemy has 
 formed for our destruction, is of a nature far 
 more formidable than that which he ostenta- 
 tiously displayed. The flotilla at Boulogne, and 
 the army of the coast, have chiefly excited 
 our attention ; hut the restitution of his regular 
 marine, and the increase of the confederated na- 
 vies, have been the Usurper's more rational de- 
 pendence, and the means of war which he has 
 been indefatigably labouring to provide. En- 
 raged at the interruption of this plan by his quar- 
 rel with Austria, he now avows in his complaints 
 its real nature and magnitude : He asserts to the 
 Germanic Diet, " that he has been employing all 
 " the resources of his empire, to construct fleets, 
 " to form his marine, and to improve his ports f ;" 
 nor is the important fact unfounded, though al- 
 leged by Bonaparte. 
 
 These dangerous efforts may be in some mea- 
 sure diverted by the new continental war; but 
 they will not be wholly suspended ; and should 
 we again be left singly to sustain the contest, 
 
 * See an official article in the Moniteur of August loth or 17th, co- 
 pied into the London papers of the 28th. 
 
 f Paper presented by M. Bachej - to the Diet of Ratbbon, Mouiteur 
 of September 11th.
 
 they will, of course, be resumed on their former 
 scale, with renovated vigour and effect. 
 ~h In preparations like these, consist the chief 
 danger, not only of England, but of Europe •> for 
 the fall of this country, or what would be the 
 same in effect, the loss, at this perilous conjunc- 
 ture, of our superiority at sea, would remove from 
 before the ambition of France, almost every ob- 
 stacle by which its march to universal empire 
 could be finally impeded. 
 
 Nor let iis proudly disdain to suppose the pos- 
 sibility of such a reverse. Let us reflect, what 
 the navies of France, Spain, and Holland, once 
 were ; let us consider that these countries form 
 but a part of those vast maritime regions, the 
 united resources of which are now at the com- 
 mand of the same energetic government; and if 
 these considerations are not enough to repel a 
 dangerous confidence, let those great maritime 
 advantages of the enemy, which the following 
 pages will expose, be added to the large account ; 
 for I propose to show, in the encroachments and 
 frauds of the neutral flags, a nursery and a refuge 
 of the confederated navies ; as well as the secret 
 conduits of a large part of those imperial resources, 
 the pernicious application of which to the restitu- 
 tion of his marine, the Usurper has lately boasted 
 — I propose to show in them his best hopes 
 in a naval war ; as well as channels of a re-
 
 venue, which sustains the ambition of France, 
 and prolongs the miseries of Europe. 
 
 In the retrospect of the last war, and of the 
 progress we have yet made in the present, one 
 singular fact immediately arrests the attention. 
 
 The finances of France appear scarcely to be 
 impaired, much less exhausted, by her enormous 
 military establishments and extensive enterpris- 
 es, notwithstanding the ruin so long apparently 
 imposed on her commerce. Poverty, the ordinary 
 sedative of modern ambition, the common peace- 
 maker between exasperated nations, seems no 
 longer to be the growth of war. 
 
 The humblest reader in this land of politi- 
 cians, if he has raised his eyes so high as to the 
 lore of Poor Robin's Almanac, has learned that — 
 " War begets poverty, poverty peace, &c"; but 
 now, he may reasonably doubt the truth of this 
 simple pedigree ; while the statesman must be 
 staggered to find the first principles of his art 
 shaken by this singular case. 
 
 In fact, political writers have been greatly em- 
 barrassed with it y and have laboured to account 
 for it by the unprecedented nature of the interior 
 situation and policy of France, or from the rapa- 
 cious conduct of her armies ; but none of these 
 theories were quite satisfactory when promulg- 
 ed ; and they have since, either been shaken by the 
 failure of those prospective consequences which
 
 were drawn from them, or have been found in- 
 adequate to explain the new and extended diffi- 
 culties of the case. 
 
 Let ample credit be taken for revolutionary 
 confiscations at home, and military rapine a- 
 broad, for the open subsidies, or secret contribu- 
 tions of allies, and for the gifts or loans extorted 
 from neutral powers, by invasion or the menace 
 of war ; still the aggregate amount, however enor- 
 mous in the eye of justice and humanity, must 
 be small when compared to the prodigious ex- 
 penses of France. 
 
 In aid of that ordinary revenue, of which com- 
 merce was the most copious source, these extra- 
 ordinary supplies may, indeed, be thought to have 
 sufficed ; but when we suppose the commercial 
 and colonial resources of France to have been 
 ruined by our hostilities during a period of near 
 twelve successive years, the brief term of the late 
 peace excepted ; and when we remember that she 
 has not only sustained, during a still longer peri- 
 od, and with scarcely any cessation *, a war ardu- 
 ous and costly beyond all example, but has fed, 
 in addition to her military myriads, those nu- 
 merous swarms of needy and rapacious upstarts, 
 who have successively fastened on her treasury, 
 
 * A most expensive contest with the negroes in the West-Indies, 
 filled up the whole interval between the last and present war.
 
 and fattened by its spoil ; I say, when these ex- 
 hausting circumstances are taken into the account, 
 the adequacy of the supply to the expenditure, 
 seems, notwithstanding the guilty resources which 
 have been mentioned, a paradox hard to explain. 
 Were the ordinary sources of revenue really lost, 
 those casual aids could no more maintain the vast 
 interior and exterior expenses of France, than 
 the autumnal rains in Abyssinia could fill the 
 channel of the Nile, and enable it still to inun- 
 date the plains of Egypt, if its native stream were 
 drawn off. 
 
 Besides, the commerce, and the colonial resour- 
 ces, of Spain and Holland are, like those of France 
 herself, apparently ruined by the war. — When, 
 therefore, we calculated on contributions from 
 these allies, this common drawback on their finan- 
 ces should diminish our estimate of that resource. 
 
 If we look back on the wars that preceded 
 the last, the difficulties in this subject will be en- 
 hanced. 
 
 To impoverish our enemies used, in our former 
 contests with France and Spain, to be a sure effect 
 of our hostilities; and its extent was always pro- 
 portionate to that of its grand instrument, our supe- 
 riority at sea. We distressed their trade, we inter- 
 cepted the produce of their colonies, and thus ex- 
 hausted their treasuries, by cutting off their chief 
 sources of revenue, as the philosopher proposed to
 
 dry up the sea, by draining the rivers that fed it. 
 By the same means, their expenditure was im- 
 mensely increased, and wasted in defensive pur- 
 poses. They were obliged to maintain fleets in 
 distant parts of the world, and to furnish strong 
 convoys for the protection of their intercourse 
 with their colonies, both on the outward and 
 homeward voyages. Again, the frequent capture 
 of these convoys, while it enriched our seamen, 
 and by the increase of import duties aided our 
 revenue, obliged our enemies, at a fresh expense, 
 to repair their loss of ships ; and when a convoy 
 outward-bound, was the subject of capture, com- 
 pelled them either to dispatch duplicate supplies 
 in the same season, at the risk of new disasters, or 
 to leave their colonies in distress, and forfeit the 
 benefit of their crops for the year. 
 
 In short, their trans-marine possessions became 
 expensive incumbrances, rather than sources of 
 revenue; and through the iteration of such losses, 
 more than by our naval victories, or colonial con- 
 quests, the house of Bourbon was vanquished by 
 the masters of the sea. 
 
 Have we then lost the triumphant means of 
 such effectual warfare; or have the ancient fields 
 of victory been neglected? 
 
 Neither such a misfortune, nor such folly, can 
 be alleged. Never was our maritime superiority 
 more decisive than in the last and present war.
 
 We are still the unresisted masters of every sea ; 
 and the open intercourse of our enemies with 
 their colonies, was never so completely preclud- 
 ed ; yet we do not hear that the merchants of 
 France, Spain, and Holland, are ruined, or that 
 their colonies are distressed, much less that their 
 exchequers are empty. 
 
 The true solution of these seeming difficul-\ 
 ties, is this : The commercial and colonial inter- 
 ests of our enemies, are now ruined in appear- 
 ance only, not in reality. They seem to have 
 retreated from the ocean, and to have abandoned 
 the ports of their colonies, but it is a mere ruse de 
 guerre — They have, in effect, for the most part, 
 only changed their flags, chartered many vessels 
 really neutral, and altered a little the former routes 
 of their trade. Their trans-marine sources of re- 
 venue, have not been for a moment destroyed 
 by our hostilities, and at present are scarcely im- 
 paired. 
 
 Let it not, however, be supposed, that the pro- 
 tection of the trade, and the revenue of an ene- 
 my, from the fair effects of our arms, is the only 
 prejudice we have sustained by the abuse of 
 the neutral flag. To the same pestilent cause, 
 are to be ascribed various other direct and col- 
 lateral disadvantages, the effects of which we 
 have severely felt in the late and present war, 
 and which now menace consequences still more 
 
 c
 
 10 
 
 pernicious, both to us and our allies. Hitherto 
 we have suffered the grossest invasions of our bel- 
 ligerent rights, warrantably if not wiselv; for the 
 cost was all our own; and while the enemy to- 
 tail v abandoned the care of his marine, the sacri- 
 fice could more safely be made : but now, when 
 he is easrerlv intent on the restitution of his navv, 
 and when other powers have gallantly stood forth 
 to stem the torrent of French ambition, the asser- 
 tion of our maritime rights is become a duty to 
 them as well as to ourselves: for our contribution 
 to an offensive war must be weak, or far less than 
 may justly be expected from such an ally as 
 Great-Britain, while the shield of an insidious 
 neutrality is cast between the enemy, and the 
 sword of our naval power. 
 
 In the hope of contributing to the correction of 
 this great evil, I propose to consider,— 
 
 1st. Its origin, nature, and extent. 
 
 2d. The remedy, and the right of applying 
 
 it. /t <i. : <i /: 
 
 3d. The prudence of that resort./ a ti /• , 
 There are few political subjects more impor- 
 tant, and few, perhaps, less generally understood 
 by the intelligent part of the community, than 
 the nature of that neutral commerce, which has 
 lately in some measure excited the public atten- 
 tion, in consequence of the invectives of Bonaparte 
 and the complaints of the American merchants.
 
 11 
 
 The Mmheiir asserts, that we have declared sugar 
 
 and coffee to be contraband of war*, and some 
 of our own newspapers, in their accounts of con- 
 ferences supposed to have taken place between 
 the 'minister, and the American resident, are 
 scarcely nearer the truth. Our government has 
 been stated to have recalled orders, which never 
 issued, and to have promised concessions, which 
 I believe were never required. 
 
 To show what the subject of controversy, if any 
 controversy actually now depends between the 
 two nations, may probably be, as well as to 
 make the abuses which I have undertaken to deli- 
 neate more intelligible, I must begin with stating 
 some important historical facts. 
 
 The colonizing powers of Europe, it is well 
 known, have always monopolized the trade of 
 their respective colonies ; allowing no supplies to 
 be carried to them under any foreign flag, or on 
 account of any foreign importers ; and prohibiting 
 the exportation of their produce in foreign ships, 
 or to any foreign country, till it has been previously 
 brought into the ports of the parent state. — Such, 
 with a few trivial and temporary exceptions, has 
 been the universal system in time of peace ; and, 
 on a close adherence to this system, the value of 
 
 * Moniteur of August 16th : London nc^rsianers of the C'fth.
 
 12 
 
 colonies in the new world, lias been supposed 
 wholly to depend. 
 
 In the war which commenced in the year 1756, 
 and was ended by the peace of 1763, France, be- 
 ing hard pressed by our maritime superiority, and 
 unable with safety either to send the requisite sup- 
 plies to her West-India Islands, or to bring their 
 produce to the European market, under her own 
 mercantile flag, resorted to the expedient of re^ 
 laxing her colonial monopoly; and admitted neu- 
 tral vessels, under certain restrictions, to carry the 
 produce of those islands to French or foreign ports 
 in Europe. Of course it was so carried, either 
 really or ostensibly, on neutral account; the object 
 being to avoid capture on the passage. 
 
 But the prize courts of Great-Britain, regard- 
 ing this new trade as unwarranted by the rights 
 of neutrality, condemned such vessels as were 
 captured xvhile engaged in it, together with their 
 cargoes; however clearly the property of both 
 might appear to be in those neutral merchants, on 
 whose behalf they were claimed. 
 
 As these vessels were admitted to a trade, in 
 which, prior to the war, French bottoms only could 
 be employed, they were considered as made French 
 by adoption : but the substantial principle of the 
 rule of judgment was this — " that a neutral has 
 no right to deliver a belligerent from the pressure 
 of his enemy's hostilities, by trading with his co-
 
 13 
 
 lonies in time of war, in a way that was prohibited 
 in time of peace." 
 
 When the facts which I would submit to the 
 attention of the reader are fully before him, the 
 justice and importance of this limitation of neu- 
 tral commerce, which has sometimes been called, 
 " the rule of the war 17-56," will be better under- 
 stood. Yet a general preliminary account of the 
 reasons on which it is founded, seems necessary to 
 the right apprehension of some of those historical 
 facts ; I give it, therefore, in the language of one, 
 whose ideas it is always injurious to quote in any 
 words but his own. 
 
 " The general rule is, that the neutral has a 
 " right to carry on, in time of war, his accus- 
 " tomed trade, to the utmost extent of which that 
 " accustomed trade is capable. Very different is 
 " the case of a trade which the neutral has never 
 " possessed, which he holds by no title of use and 
 " habit in times of peace ; and which, in fact, can 
 " obtain in war, by do other title, than by the 
 " success of the one belligerent against the other , 
 " and at the expense of that very belligerent 
 " under whose success he sets up his title ; and 
 " such I take to be the colonial trade, generally 
 " speaking. 
 
 " What is the colonial trade, generally speak- 
 " ing ? It is a trade generally shut up to the ex- 
 " elusive use of the mother country, to which
 
 14 
 
 * the colony belongs, and this to a double use — the 
 " one that of supplying a market for the consump- 
 " tion of native commodities, and the other, of 
 " furnishing to the mother country the peculiar 
 " commodities of the colonial regions : to these 
 " two purposes of the mother Country, the gene- 
 " ral policy respecting colonies belonging to the 
 " states of Europe, has restricted them. 
 
 " With respect to other countries, generally 
 " speaking, the colony has no existence. It is 
 " possible that indirectly, and remotely, such co- 
 " lonies may affect the commerce of other coun- 
 " tries. The manufactures of Germany, may find 
 " their way into Jamaica or Guadaloupe, and the 
 " sugar of Jamaica or Guadaloupe, into the inte- 
 " rior parts of German}-; but as to any direct 
 " communication or advantages resulting therc- 
 " from, Guadaloupe and Jamaica are no more to 
 " Germany, than if they were settlements in the 
 " mountain-, of the moon. To commerciai pur- 
 Ci poses they are not in the same planet. If they 
 " were annihilated, it would make no chasm in 
 " the commercial map of Hamburgh. If Guada- 
 " loupe could bo sunk in the sea, by the c licet of 
 " hostility at the beginning of a war, ir would be 
 " a mighty loss to France, as Jamaica would be to 
 " England, if it could be made the subject of a 
 " similar act of violence ; but such events would 
 " find their wav into the chronicles of other coun-
 
 15 
 
 " tries, as events of disinterested curiosity, and 
 " nothing more. 
 
 " Upon the interruption of a war, what are the 
 " rights of belligerents and neutrals respectively, 
 " regarding such places ? It is an indubitable right 
 c< of the belligerent to possess himself of such 
 " places, as of any other possession of his enemy. 
 " This is his common right ; but he has the cer- 
 " tain means of carrying such a right into effect, 
 " if he has a decided superiority at sea. Such 
 " colonies are dependent for their existence, as 
 "colonies, on foreign supplies; if they cannot 
 " be supplied and defended, they must fall to the 
 " belligerent of course: and if the belligerent 
 " chooses to apply his means to such an object, 
 " what right has a third party, perfectly neutral, 
 iC to step in and prevent the execution r No cxist- 
 " ing interest of his, is affected by it; lie can have 
 " no right to apply to his own use the beneficial 
 (i consequences of the mere act of the belligerent, 
 " and to say, " True it is you have, by force of 
 cc arms, forced such places out of the exclusive 
 " possession of the enemy, but I will share the 
 *' benefit of the conquest, and by sharing its be- 
 " nefits, prevent its progress. You have in effect, 
 " and by lawful means, turned the enemy out of 
 " the possession which he had exclusively main- 
 ** tained against the whole world, and with whom 
 * we had never presumed to interfere ; but we
 
 16 
 
 " will interpose to prevent his absolute surrender, 
 " by the means of that very opening, which the 
 " prevalence of your arms alone has effected : — 
 <c supplies shall be sent and their products shall 
 "be exported: you have lawfully destroyed his 
 u monopoly, but you shall not be permitted to 
 " possess it yourself ; we insist to share the fruits 
 " of your victories ; and your blood and treasure 
 " have been expended, not for your own interest, 
 " but for the common benefit of others." 
 
 " Upon these grounds, it cannot be contended 
 " to be a right of neutrals, to intrude into a com- 
 " merce which had been uniformly shut against 
 " them, and which is now forced open merely by 
 " the pressure of war: for when the enemy, iin- 
 " der an entire inability to supply his colonics, 
 " and to export their products, affects to open 
 " them to neutrals, it is not his will, but his ne- 
 " cessity, that changes the system : that change 
 " is the direct and unavoidable consequence of the 
 " compulsion of war ; it is a measure not of French 
 " councils, but of British force*." 
 
 * Judgment of Sir William Scott, in the case of the Immanuel, at the 
 Admiralty, Nov. 1199. 
 
 I quote from the second volume of the Reports of Dr. Robinson ; a 
 work of transcendent value; ai:d which will rise in the estimation of Eu- 
 rope and America, in proportion as the rights and duties of nations are bet- 
 ter known and respected. It repays the attention of the English lawyer, 
 statesman, or scholar, not only by legal and political information of a 
 Kijhly important kind, and which is no where eh»e to be so fully and
 
 17 
 
 Such were the principles of a rule first practi* 
 cally established by the supreme Tribunal of 
 Prize during the war of 1756, only because the 
 ease which demanded its application then first 
 occurred ; and it ought to be added, that the de- 
 cisions of that tribunal, at the same period, were 
 justly celebrated throughout Europe for their equi- 
 ty and wisdom*. 
 
 After France became a party to the American 
 war, some captures were made, to which the same 
 rule of law might, perhaps, in strictness, have been 
 applied : for that power had again opened, in some 
 degree, the ports of her West-India islands, to the 
 ships of neutral powers. In this case, however, the 
 measure preceded the commencement of her hos- 
 tilities with Great Britain ; and it was therefore spe- 
 ciously represented on the part of the neutral claim- 
 ants, as a genuine and permanent change in the 
 commercial system of the enemy, by which they 
 had a right to profit. The case in other respects also 
 was much weaker than that of the war of 1756.; 
 for our enemies, during the American contest, were 
 never so inferior at sea, as to be unable to pro ■ 
 
 eorrectly obtained; but by exhibiting .some of the. happiest models of a, 
 chaste judicial eloquence. 
 
 * See Blackstone's Commentaries, Vol. III. 70; Montesquieu's 
 Letters, 5th March, lo3; end Vattei's Law of Nations, Book II. 
 <\ 7, ». S-i, 
 
 D
 
 18 
 
 tect, in a great measure, their colonial trade from 
 our hostilities. At some periods, they even possess- 
 ed a naval superiority ; especially in the West- 
 Indian seas ; where, in consequence, some of 
 cur most valuable islands fell into their hands, 
 and were retained by them till the peace. France, 
 therefore, could scarcely be said, in this case, to 
 have rescued herself by the relaxation of her co- 
 lonial system from actual distress, the effect of a 
 maritime war. 
 
 It was a measure of convenience, no doubt, 
 otherwise it would not have been adopted : but 
 it was not an expedient which the pressure of our 
 hostilities had made absolutely necessary. The 
 distinction which I have first mentioned, however, 
 was that which was principally insisted upon, in 
 the leading cases of this class*. 
 
 On these grounds, presumably, or on some of 
 them, the ships in question, were restored by our 
 Supreme Tribunal of Prize. — Perhaps the politi- 
 cal difficulties of the day, especially the powerful, 
 though injurious, influence of the first armed neu- 
 trality, may have had some weight in those deci- 
 sions. But whatever the motives were, the rule of 
 the war 1756 was not avowedly departed from; 
 
 * Cases oi' the Tiger, and the Copenhagen, at the Cockpit, ir
 
 19 
 
 much less expressly reversed. The most that ca» 
 be alleged is, that in a case which, notwithstanding 
 the distinctions above mentioned, may be possibly 
 thought to have warranted the application of that 
 rule, it was not at this time applied. 
 
 The next war, was our late arduous contest with 
 France ; in which our enemy, from the very com- 
 mencement of hostilities, reverted to his former 
 policy, without limitation or disguise. — Despairing 
 of being able to dispute with us the dominion of 
 the sea, the Republic, the moment she drew the', 
 sword against us, threw wide open to every paci- 
 fic flag all the ports of her colonies ; some of 
 which had been, in fact, partially opened a little 
 earlier, without her licence, by the local revolu- 
 tionary powers ; and the neutral merchants im- 
 mediately rushed in with avidity, to reap the of- 
 fered harvest. 
 
 Our government, en notice of the general fact,, 
 adopted with promptitude the course which it 
 seemed proper to take. On the 6th of November? 
 2793, a royal instruction to the commanders of 
 his Majesty's ships of war and privateers, was is- 
 sued, ordering them "to stop and detain for law- 
 " ful adjudication, all vessels laden with goods the 
 " produce of any French colony, or carrying pro- 
 " visions or other supplies for the' use of any such 
 " colony." 
 
 A new Power had now arisen on the western
 
 2fr 
 
 shore of the Atlantic, whose position, and mari- 
 time spirit, were calculated to give new and vast 
 importance to every question of neutral rights ; 
 especially in the American seas. The merchants 
 of the United States were the first, and by far the 
 most enterprising adventurers in the new field that 
 'was opened to neutrals in the Antilles; and the 
 ports of the French islands were speedily crowded 
 with their vessels. 
 
 Of course, the cargoes they received there, as 
 well as those they delivered, were all declared by 
 their papers to be neutral property; but when 
 instead of rum and molasses, the ordinary and 
 ample exchange in the West-India markets for the 
 provisions and lumber of America, the neutral 
 ship owners pretended to have acquired, in barter 
 for those cheap and bulky commodities, full car- 
 goes of sugar and coffee ; the blindest credulity 
 could scarcely give credit to the tale. It was 
 evident, that the Hag of the United States was, 
 for the most part, used to protect the property 
 of the French planter, not of the American mer- 
 chant. 
 
 The royal instruction, nevertheless, seemed to 
 operate severely against the new-born neutral 
 power. Great numbers of ships, under American 
 colours, were taken in the West-Indies, and con- 
 demned by the Vice Admiralty Courts. 
 
 Ihe fraudulent pretences of neutral property
 
 Si 
 
 in the cargoes were in general so gross, being 
 contrived by men at that time inexpert in such 
 business, that a great part of these prizes might 
 have been condemned on the most satisfactory 
 grounds as hostile property, had the proper exa- 
 minations taken place. But the Vice Admiralty 
 "Courts, which at that time were very badly con- 
 stituted, regarded the illegality of the trade, as an 
 infallible ground of decision ; and therefore were 
 grossly remiss in taking and preserving the evi- 
 dence on the point of property. In many cases, 
 they proceeded no further in putting the standing 
 interrogatories to the persons usually examined, 
 than was necessary to obtain from them an avowal 
 of the place of shipment or destination. The cap- 
 tors, influenced by the same reliance on the 
 rule of law, neglected to searcli for concealed 
 papers; and those documents which the masters 
 thought fit to produce, were often given back to 
 them at their request, without the preservation of 
 a copy, or any minute of their nature or con- 
 tents: irregularities, which proved in the sequel 
 highly injurious to the captors, and a cover for 
 fraudulent claims. 
 
 It is needless to state particularly, the disputed 
 that ensued between our government and the 
 neutral powers, or the amicable arrangements by 
 which they were terminated ; as these facts are 
 •sufficiently known. It is however proper to re-
 
 QC) 
 
 mark, that nothing was expressly settled by any 
 convention, respecting the lawfulness of neutral 
 commerce with the colonies of a belligerent state - y 
 nor were any concessions made, whereby this 
 country was in any degree precluded from assert- 
 ing the rule of the war 1756, at any subsequent 
 period, to its utmost practical extent. 
 
 It was agreed, that all sentences of condem- 
 nation founded. on the instruction of November, 
 1?93, should be submitted to the revision of the 
 appellate jurisdiction ; but that instruction was in 
 January, 1794, so far repealed, that instead of the 
 comprehensive order therein contained, the direc- 
 tion only was to seize " such vessels as were laden 
 with goods the produce of the French West-India 
 Islands, and coming directly from any port of the 
 said Islands to Europe." 
 
 The latter instruction remained in force till 
 January, 1798, when a new one was substituted, 
 which remained unrevoked to the end of the war. 
 By this last Royal Order, the direction was to 
 bring in for lawful adjudication all " vessels laden 
 " with the. produce of any island or settlement 
 cf of France, Spain, or Holland; and coming di- 
 " rectly from any port of the said island or set- 
 " tlements to any port in Europe, not being a 
 " port of this kingdom, or of the country to which 
 " the vessel, being neutral, should belong." In 
 other words, European neutrals, might, without
 
 23 
 
 being liable to capture under this last instruction^ 
 bring the produce of a hostile colony to ports of 
 their own country ; and either these, or the citi- 
 zens of the United States, might now carry such 
 produce directly to England; either of which voy- 
 ages would have subjected the ship to seizure un- 
 der the Instruction of 1794. 
 
 The decisions of the Admiralty Courts, and of 
 the Lords Commissioners of Appeals, on this in- 
 teresting subject, next demand our notice. 
 
 Royal instructions, from the time of their pro- 
 mulgation, of course, become law to air executive 
 officers acting under his Majesty's commission, 
 so as absolutely to direct their conduct, in relation 
 either to the enemy, or the neutral flag. Their 
 legislative force m the prize court also, will not 
 be disputed ; except that if a royal order could be 
 supposed to militate plainly against the rights of 
 neutral subjects, as founded on the acknowledged 
 law of nations, the judge, it may be contended, 
 ought not to yield obedience; but when the so- 
 verign only interposes to remit such belligerent 
 rights, as he might lawfully enforce, there can be 
 no room for any such question ; for, " volenti non 
 fit injuria,'" and the captor can have no rights, but 
 Mich as he derives from the sovereign, whose com- 
 mission he beers. 
 
 It results from these principles, that whether a 
 judgment by the prize cour^, condemning pro-
 
 24 
 
 perty claimed as neutral, but captured pursuant to 
 a prohibitory royal instruction, does or does not 
 amount to a positive declaration of the opinion 
 of that tribunal, on the principle of the prohibition 
 itself; the restitution of property so claimed, in 
 pursuance of a permissive instruction, clearly is 
 no aflirmation that by the general principles of 
 the law of nations, independently of the will of 
 the Sovereign, the captured property ought to 
 have been restored. 
 
 If this remark be kept in view, it will be 
 found that the Admiralty Court, and the Lords 
 Commissioners, were so far from impeaching dur- 
 ing the late war, by any of their decisions, the 
 rule of the war 17-56, that they, on the contrary, 
 adhered firmly to the sense of their predecessors, 
 the judges of that period. They condemned all 
 vessels and cargoes, taken in voyages that fell 
 within the prohibitory intent of the existing in- 
 struction, which was so far practically pursuant to 
 that rule : nor did they omit in such decisions to 
 declare that they considered the rule of the war 
 1756, as founded oil most incontestable principles 
 of the law of nations. On the other hand, they 
 restored such neutral property as was captured in 
 the course of a voyage allowed by the existing 
 instruction ; expressly on the ground of that vo- 
 luntary relaxation of the rule of law, which his 
 Majesty had been pleased to introduce.
 
 25 
 
 It should here be observed, that these royal 
 orders were all couched in directory, not in pro- 
 hibitory terms ; also, that in none of them is any 
 branch of the neutral intercourse with the colo- 
 nies of our enemies, expressly permitted. But 
 Avhen the order of November, 1793, to seize all 
 vessels bringing produce from the hostile colonies, 
 was revoked by that of January, 1794., and in 
 lieu thereof, a direction was given to seize such 
 vessels when bound to Europe, an indulgence to 
 neutral vessels carrying such cargoes to other 
 parts of the world, was plainly implied; and in like 
 manner, when the instruction of 1798 still further 
 narrowed the prohibitory effect of the direction, 
 confining it to vessels bound to countries in Eu- 
 rope not their own, with the exception of Great- 
 Britain, the trade to their own ports, and to ports 
 of this kingdom,, was by clear implication per- 
 mitted. 
 
 Their lordships, and the judges of the court 
 of admiralty, also followed these distinctions into 
 fair analogies, in respect of the outward voyage. 
 This branch of the trade, was left unnoticed in the 
 two latter instructions; but as that of 1793, which 
 placed the carrying supplies to a hostile colony, on 
 the same footing with the bringing away its pro- 
 duce, had been generally revoked; it would have 
 been unreasonable and inconsistent not to admit, 
 that a neutral vessel might allowably go to the 
 
 E
 
 26 
 
 colony, from the same port, to which she was now 
 allowed to carry its produce. Such outward voy- 
 ages therefore were held to be within the clear 
 meaning of the relaxation. 
 
 On the other hand, when neither the letter nor 
 spirit of the royal instructions, could fairly be 
 construed to have permitted the particular branch 
 of this commerce with the hostile colonies, in re- 
 spect of which a question arose, it was always 
 held by those tribunals to be illegal. Thus, a 
 voyage from any hostile country, whether in 
 Europe or elsewhere, to any hostile colony ; or 
 vice versa ; the voyage of an American from a 
 hostile colony to any port in Europe except 
 Great-Britain; the voyage of a Dane or Swede 
 from any hostile colony to the United States of 
 America ; and their respective converses, have all 
 been held to be contrary to the law of war, and 
 have induced the condemnation both of the ships 
 and cargoes*. 
 
 In short, the doctrine uniformly held by the 
 lords commissioners of appeals, as well as by the 
 Court of Admiralty, was such as the learned 
 judge of that court, has thus comprehensively ex- 
 pressed : — " The true rule of the court, is the text 
 " of the instructions ; what is not found therein 
 
 * Cases of the New Adventure ; The Charlotte, Coffin ; the 
 Volant, Bessom ; the Wilhelmina, &,e. &c. at the Cockpit, la»t 
 war.
 
 " permitted, is understood to be prohibited ; upon 
 ** this plain principle, that the colony trade is ge- 
 " nerally prohibited, and that whatever is not spe- 
 " cially relaxed, continues in a state of interdic- 
 tion*." 
 
 The only decisions in which the supreme tri- 
 bunal may possibly be supposed to have departed 
 from the rule of the war of 1756, on any other 
 ground than that of a voluntary remission of bel- 
 ligerent rights by the crown, were the restitu- 
 tions of vessels and cargoes which had been cap- 
 tured and condemned prior to the instruction of 
 January 1794; for by that order the first legisla- 
 tive relaxation of the general prohibitory rule was 
 introduced. 
 
 Vessels and cargoes of this description certainly 
 were restored, when the voyages in which they 
 were taken were found to have been such, as that 
 instruction, if in force at the time, would have le- 
 galised. 
 
 There may be good reasons for giving to such 
 orders in time of war, when they go to enlarge, not 
 to restrain, the indulgence of neutral trade, a re- 
 troactive effect upon cases still depending in judg- 
 ment. Nor is it unjust towards captors ; for since 
 they often derive from sudden changes, during the 
 
 "'•' Case of the Immamiel at the Admiralty, 2d Robinson's Reports, 202.
 
 28 
 
 war, in our relations with different powers, or 
 from new strictness in the conduct of the war 
 itself, benefits not in their contemplation at the 
 time of the capture ; it is reasonable that their pri- 
 vate interest should, on the other hand, give way 
 to the public good, when necessary for purposes 
 of conciliation with neutral states, and to effec- 
 tuate such arrangements with them, as may 
 intervene between the capture and the judgment. 
 It might be added, that a captor's rights under 
 the acts of parliament which give him the benefit 
 of the prizes he makes, comprehend by express 
 law, no more than property taken from the ene- 
 my ; and are extended to neutral property con- 
 demned for violations of the law of war, only 
 through a liberal construction made by the prize 
 tribunals ; consequently it would be the more un- 
 reasonable to restrain on the notion of an inchoate 
 right in him prior to the definitive sentence, the 
 power of the state itself to decide, how far the 
 rules of that law shall be relaxed in favour of 
 neutral powers. It is enough that he is indemni- 
 fied ; and in the present case, all captors, whose 
 disappointment, would have been attended with 
 actual loss, had reason to be satisfied with the na- 
 tional liberality and justice. 
 
 But in truth, the lords commissioners found 
 also some equitable reasons, on behalf of the neu-
 
 29 
 
 tral claimants, for giving to such of them as had 
 traded with the French islands, prior to January 
 1794, the benefit of that instruction. 
 
 I presume not to develope the motives of his 
 Majesty's government for granting such large and 
 truly costly indulgences as were ultimately ac- 
 corded to neutral commerce during the last war, at 
 the expense of our belligerent interests. They were 
 perhaps proportionate in their weight, to the mag- 
 nitude of the sacrifice. But the indulgent instruc- 
 tion of 1794, was probably founded in part, on a 
 consideration which avowedly weighed much with 
 the lords commissioners, for giving it a retrospec- 
 tive effect. It was found, that before the French 
 actually engaged in hostilities with any maritime 
 power, the revolutionary assemblies and governors 
 of her West-India islands, had opened some of 
 their ports, to a considerable extent, to foreign ves- 
 sels bringing necessary supplies ; and consequent- 
 ly that the principle of the rule of the war 1756, 
 did not apply to the whole extent of the existing 
 neutral commerce with those colonies *. 
 
 * As this is an important fact, of which authentic evidence is not 
 easily to be found in Europe, I subjoin a proclamation of the French 
 governor Itehague and the colonial assembly of Martinique, by which 
 certain ports of that island were opened. It is extracted from the evi- 
 dence in a prize appeal, that of the Peter, Augustus Rob»on, mas- 
 ter, before the lords commissioners, Dec. 16, 1801.
 
 30 
 
 This innovation was apparently unknown to, or 
 overlooked by our government, when the instruc- 
 
 " PROCLAMATION. 
 
 " John Peter Anthony de Behague, lieutenant-general in 
 " the King's armies, governor-general of the Windward Is- 
 " lands, commanding in chief the forces by land and sea. 
 
 " Examined by us the resolution of the colonial assem- 
 " bly of the 14th of this month, the purport whereof fol- 
 " lows : 
 
 " Extract of the verbal process of the resolution of the colo- 
 " nial assembly in their silting of the fourth day of December, 
 " 1792. 
 
 " The colonial assembly of Martinique, after hearing the re- 
 11 ports of its committee, and taking into consideration what 
 " had been done at Guadaloupe, upon opening the ports, re- 
 " solved, 
 
 " 1st. That the ports and roads of Saint Pierre, Fort 
 " Royal, and Marin, shall be open to all strangers without 
 " exception, for the introduction of all sustenances, and 
 " other necessary articles, as well for the cultivation of lands, 
 " as the erection of buildings, and they are permitted to ex- 
 " port produce of every kind, which may be given them in re- 
 " turn. 
 
 " 2d. That without altering old customs in the regard to 
 14 the duties on importation, those payable on exportation, 
 " as well by foreigners as Frenchmen, as also by those ship- 
 41 'ping- either to a foreign country, or the French ports 
 " shall, from the date of the publication of these presents, 
 " consist in one sole duty of three per cent. ; which duty 
 " shall be borne by the shippers, independent of the addi- 
 " ditional duty of 27 livres per hogshead of sugar, and two
 
 31 
 
 tion of November 1793, was trained ; otherwise an 
 exception would probably have been made in fa- 
 
 " and a quarter per cent, en all other island produce 
 i( which shall be received as before, and which are at the 
 " charge of the seller. Taffia, rum, and molasses, shall 
 ** continue to be liable only to the former established du- 
 " ties. 
 
 " 3d. That the duties above alluded to shall be paid, 
 " according to the usages and forms already fixed. That all 
 " the above regulations shall continue in full force until ex- 
 " press orders to the contrary. In order that the present 
 " resolution, with the approbation of the governor, may 
 " Jbe carried into effect without delay, 1000 copies shall be 
 " forthwith printed, affixed, published, and sent to the neighbour- 
 " ing islands, wherever it may be necessary. 
 
 (Signed) 
 
 " Gilliet Charley, Vice-President. 
 " Gallet S. Aurin, President. 
 " RiGORnY, Secretary. 
 " Des Londes, Joint Secretary." 
 " By virtue of the powers with which we are invested, we 
 " approve, and do approve of the above decree being car- 
 " ried into execution, according to the form and effect 
 " thereof; and in consequence, and by virtue of the same 
 " powers, order, and do order, to the administration, bo- 
 " dies, and functionaries, that these presents be transcribed 
 " in our registry, read, published, and executed in the re- 
 " spective districts. Given at Fort Royal, Martinique, unde r 
 " our seal, and the countersign of our secretary, the 1 oth day 
 " of December, 1792. 
 
 (Signed) " Behague. 
 
 " By order of the General, 
 
 (Signed) " Perriquet.''
 
 32 
 
 vour of such neutral vessels as were found trading 
 within the limitations of the new laws, promulged 
 before the war. 
 
 It must indeed be owned, that this relaxation 
 of the national monopoly, was a mere temporary 
 expedient, the result of distress occasioned by re- 
 volution and civil war in the parent state, and the 
 consequent neglect of her trans-marine interests 
 in general ; that the legislative authority from 
 which it flowed was highly questionable* ; and 
 that it was not even pretended by its authors, M»o 
 be founded on any intention of permanently al- 
 tering the established commercial relations be- 
 tween the mother country and her colonies. 
 Nor would it have been unnatural to surmise, 
 that this innovation was adopted in contempla- 
 tion of that war with the maritime powers, which 
 France was determined to provoke, and which so 
 
 * It appeared in the evidence in the same cause from which the 
 above proclamation is extracted, that the royalist and republican par- 
 ties, who alternately prevailed in the French Windward- Islands in that 
 season of distraction which immediately preceded the late war, suc- 
 cessively opened and shut the ports in opposition to each other, du- 
 ring their brief periods of authority ; and it is remarkable that the 
 party of the royalists and planters, under General Behague, was 
 that which introduced and supported this innovation. — Their oppo- 
 nents abstained from it ou motives of respect to the authority of 
 the National Convention, notwithstanding the distress of the islands at 
 the time.
 
 83 
 
 soon after took place. If so, it was a mere stra- 
 tagem to elude our belligerent rights ; and we were 
 no more bound to admit any claims of neu- 
 tral privilege which might be deduced from it, than 
 if the innovation had been made after the war 
 had actually commenced. The claimants, how- 
 ever, contended that it was not to be considered 
 as a temporizing measure, but as a change of 
 system to which France would permanently ad- 
 here; and the revolutionary spirit of the day gave 
 some plausibility to the expectation, though the 
 conduct of the French government, subsequent to 
 the treaty of Amiens, has proved it to have been 
 groundless. 
 
 But however disputable the duty might be on 
 our part, to tolerate this new trade during the late 
 war, on the ground of any change that had pre- 
 viously taken place in the West-Indies, it is clear 
 that the neutral merchants who had engaged in it 
 prior to any notice of our hostilities with France, 
 were entitled to finish their voyages without mo- 
 lestation. This indeed was never disputed; un- 
 less when their ships were detained on suspicion 
 of having French property on board. But had 
 the fact of the new colonial regulations been 
 known, something more seems to have been due 
 to them. Some notice ought, perhaps, to have 
 been given, that this country would not acquiesce 
 
 F
 
 34 
 
 in the further prosecution of a trade so opposite to 
 her belligerent rights ; and this the rather, because 
 we had already forborne to assert them in a case 
 somewhat similar, in the last preceding w r ar. — 
 No such notice was given prior to the instruc- 
 tion of November, 1793; and therefore the neu- 
 tral merchants might naturally enough conclude, 
 that the toleration of this commerce, which they 
 experienced at the commencement of the war, 
 would be extended to their future voyages. 
 
 That these considerations were admitted by his 
 Majesty's ministers, in the discussions that ensued 
 between them and the neutral powers, may be 
 reasonably conjectured; but certain it is, that the 
 lords commissioners of appeals, adverted to them 
 as one motive of the great indulgence shown by 
 their lordships to the class of claimants whose 
 cases we are now reviewing ; and consequently, if 
 the right to give a retroactive effect to the in- 
 struction of January, 1794, can reasonably be 
 questioned, we have here another ground, on which 
 these restitutions may well be reconciled with the 
 rule of the war 17-56. 
 
 So far were the decisions of their lordships, even 
 in these early and favourable cases, from impeach- 
 ing the principle of that important rule, that by 
 some of them it was practically affirmed. Such 
 American vessels captured in the summer of 1793, 
 as were laden with French colonial produce, and
 
 35 
 
 bound to the ports of France, or to Europe, were 
 condemned expressly on that rule of law *. 
 
 Haying stated thus generally the conduct both 
 of the executive government, and of the prize tri- 
 bunals of Great-Britain, in regard to this great 
 principle of the law of nations, during the last 
 war, I have to add, that on the recommencement 
 of hostilities with France in 1803, the same sys- 
 tem was with little variation pursued. 
 
 An instruction, dated the 24th of June in that 
 year, directed the commanders of his Majesty's 
 ships of war and privateers " not to seize any 
 " neutral vessels which should be found carrying 
 " on trade directly between the colonies of the 
 *' enemy, and the neutral country to which the 
 " vessel belonged, and laden with property of the 
 " inhabitants of such neutral country ; provided 
 " that such neutral vessel should not be supply- 
 " ing, nor should have on the outward voyage sup- 
 " plied, the enemy, with any articles contraband 
 " of war, and should not be trading with any 
 " blockaded ports." 
 
 This proviso had been rendered too necessary 
 by the misconduct of neutrals in the former war, 
 to be now omitted, and forms the only substantial 
 difference between the existing instruction, and 
 that of January 1798 ; except that the ports of 
 
 * Cases of the Charlotte, Coffin ; the Volant, Bessom ; and Betsy, 
 Kinsman, 19th De<\ 1801,
 
 36 
 
 his kingdom are no longer permitted places of 
 destination, from the hostile colonies ; and that the 
 cargo, as well as the ship, is now required to belong 
 to subjects of the same neutral country to or from 
 which the voyage is made. 
 
 The general result of this historical statement 
 is, that we have receded very far in practice from 
 the application of the rule of the war 17«56, in some 
 points, while we have adhered to it in others; but 
 that the principle of that important rule in point 
 of right, has never been at any time, either theo- 
 retically or practically abandoned. 
 
 Let us next inquire what use has been made by 
 neutral merchants, of the indulgences which the 
 British government has thus liberally granted. — 
 We have suffered neutrals to trade with the colo- 
 nies of our enemy, directly to or from the ports of 
 their own respective countries, but not directly to 
 or from any other part of the world, England, dur- 
 ing the last war, excepted. Have they been con- 
 tent to observe the restriction ? 
 
 One pretext of the neutral powers, for claim- 
 ing a right to trade with the hostile colonies, 
 was the desire of supplying themselves with sugar, 
 and other articles of West-India produce, for their 
 own consumption ; and it was speciously repre- 
 sented as a particular hardship in the case of Ame- 
 rica, that, though a near neighbour to the West- 
 Indies, she should be precluded from buying those
 
 37 
 
 Commodities in the colonial markets of our ene- 
 mies, while shut out by law from our own. 
 
 The argument was more plausible than sound ; 
 for in time of peace, this new power was subject 
 to the same general exclusion ; as were also the 
 other neutral nations. — Besides, Denmark has co- 
 lonies, which more than supplies her own moderate 
 consumption ; and as to that of Sweden, and of the 
 United States, it was always exceedingly small. 
 The only products of the West-Indies, that the lat- 
 ter usually imported, a little refined sugar, and cof- 
 fee from England excepted, were rum and molas- 
 ses ; and with these we were willing still copious- 
 ly to supply them from our own islands ; nor would 
 the importing of such articles as these from the hos- 
 tile colonies perhaps have been thought worth a 
 serious dispute. It is well known that the frugal citi- 
 zens of America, make molasses for the most part 
 their substitute for sugar ; and have learned from 
 habit to prefer it to that more costly article. 
 
 However, this pretext was completely removed, 
 when the British government gave way so far to it, 
 and the other arguments of the neutral powers, as 
 to allow them to carry on the trade in question, 
 to their own ports. The instruction of 1794, 
 indeed, seemed not to concede so much to the neu- 
 tral states of Europe; but when it is recollected, 
 that Denmark and Sweden each possessed islands 
 in the West-Indies, which might be made entre- 
 
 61 85
 
 38 
 
 pots between their European dominions and the 
 French colonies, it will be seen that they were 
 put nearly on an equal footing with the United 
 States of America. 
 
 Had the neutral powers been influenced by jus- 
 tice and moderation, these concessions would not 
 only have been satisfactory, but might have been 
 guarded by reciprocal concessions, perhaps, against 
 any pernicious abuse ; as was attempted in the 12th 
 article of our treaty with America, soon after ne- 
 gociated and signed by Mr. Jay. 
 
 The chief danger of our so far receding from the 
 full extent of our belligerent rights, as to allow the 
 neutral states to import directly the produce of the 
 hostile colonies, was that it might be re-exported, 
 and sent either to the mother country in Europe, 
 or to neighbouring, neutral ports, from which the 
 produce itself, or its proceeds, might be easily re- 
 mitted to the hostile country ; in which Case our ene- 
 mies would scarcely feel any serious ill effect from 
 the war, in regard to their colonial trade. It was 
 wisely, therefore, stipulated in the American treaty, 
 that West-India produce should not be re-exported 
 during the Avar from that country ; and the bet- 
 ter to reconcile the United States to that restric- 
 tion, they were admitted, by the same article, 
 to an extensive trade, during the same period, and 
 for two years longer, with the British West-India 
 islands.
 
 Had not this equitable agreement proved abor- 
 tive, arrangements of a like tendency would no 
 doubt have been negociated with the neutral 
 powers of Europe : but unfortunately, the clamor- 
 ous voice of the French agents, and of a few self- 
 interested men, in America, prevailed so much 
 over the suggestions of justice, and the true per- 
 manent interests of both countries, that in the ra- 
 tification of the treaty by the government of the 
 United States, the 12th article was excepted. 
 
 In truth, those injurious consequences which 
 formed a reasonable subject of apprehension to this 
 country, were essential to the selfish views of the 
 neutral merchants who had engaged in the new 
 trade with the French colonies. 
 
 To the Americans especially, whether dealing 
 on their own account, or as secret agents of the 
 enemy, the profit would have been comparatively 
 small, and the business itself inconsiderable, had 
 they not been allowed to send fonvardto Europe, 
 at least in a circuitous way, the produce they 
 brought from the islands. The obligation of first 
 importing into their own country, was an incon- 
 venience which their geographical position made of 
 little moment ; but the European, and not the 
 American market, was that in which alone the ul- 
 timate profit could be reaped, or the neutralizing 
 commission secured. 
 
 In the partial ratification of the treaty by Ame-
 
 40 
 
 rica, our government acquiesced. No conven- 
 tional arrangements consequently remained with 
 that neutral power, and none were made with any 
 other for palliating the evils likely to arise from 
 the relaxing instruction ; but they were left to 
 operate, and progressively to increase, to that per- 
 nicious and dangerous extent which shall be pre- 
 sently noticed. 
 
 War, in suspending the direct communication 
 between the hostile colonies and their parent 
 states, "cannot dissolve those ties of property, of 
 private connexion, of taste, opinion, and habit, 
 which bind them to each other. The colonist still 
 prefers those manufactures of his native country 
 with which he has been usually supplied ; and still 
 wishes to lodge in her banks, or with her mer- 
 chants, the disposable value of his produce. That 
 the colonial proprietors resident in Europe, must 
 desire to have their revenues remitted thither, as 
 formerly, is still moreobvious; and indeed such an 
 adherence to the old course of things, is both with 
 them and their absent brethren, in general rather 
 a matter of necessity than choice ; for mortgagees, 
 and other creditors, in the mother country, are 
 commonly entitled to receive a large part of the 
 annual returns of a West-India plantation. 
 
 The consequence is, that into whatever new chan- 
 nels the commerce of the belligerent colonies may 
 artificially be pushed by the war, it must always have
 
 41 
 
 a most powerful tendency, to find its way from its 
 former fountains to its former reservoirs. The 
 colonial proprietor, if obliged to ship his goods 
 in neutral bottoms, will still send them directly 
 to his home in Europe, if he can; and if not, will 
 make some neutral port a mere warehouse, or at 
 most a market, from which the proceeds of the 
 shipment, if not the goods themselves, may be re- 
 mitted to himself, or his agents, in the parent state. 
 
 Such has been the event in the case before us. 
 But let us see more particularly how the grand 
 objects of the enemy planter and merchant, have 
 been, in this respect, accomplished. 
 
 When enabled by the royal instructions, 
 to trade safely to and from neutral ports, they 
 found various indirect means opened to them for 
 the attainment of those ultimate ends, of which 
 the best, and most generally adopted, were the two 
 following : — They might either clear out for a 
 neutral port, and, under cover of that pretended 
 destination, make a direct voyage from the colony 
 to the parent state ; or they might really proceed 
 to some neutral country, and from thence re- 
 export the cargo, in the same or a different bot- 
 tom, to whatever European market, whether neu- 
 tral or hostile, they preferred. 
 
 The first of these was the shortest, and most 
 convenient method ; the other the most secure. — -
 
 42 
 
 The former was chiefly adopted by the Dutch, on 
 their homeward voyages ; because a pretended 
 destination for Prussian, Swedish, or Danish ports 
 in the North Sea, or the Baltic, was a plausible 
 mask, even in the closest approximation the ship 
 might make to the Dutch coast, and to the mo- 
 ment of her slipping into port : but the latter 
 method, was commonly preferred by the Spaniards 
 and French, in bringing home their colonial pro- 
 duce; because no credible neutral destination could 
 in general be pretended, that would consist with the 
 geographical position and course of a ship coming 
 directly from the West-Indies, if met with near 
 the end of her voyage, in the latitude of their 
 principal ports. 
 
 The American flag, in particular, was a cover 
 that could scarcely ever be adapted to the former 
 method of eluding our hostilities ; while it was 
 found peculiarly convenient in the other. Such 
 is the position of the United States, and such the 
 effect of the trade-winds, that European -vessels, 
 homeword-bound from the West-Indies, can touch 
 at their ports with very little inconvenience or 
 delay ; and the same is the case, though in a less 
 degree, in regard to vessels coming from the re- 
 motest parts of South America or the East-Indies. 
 The passage from the Gulf of Mexico, espe- 
 cially, runs so close along the North American 
 shore, that ships bound from the Havannah, from
 
 43 
 
 Vera Cruz, and other great Spanish ports border- 
 ing on that Gulf, to Europe, can touch at cer- 
 tain ports in the United States with scarcely any 
 deviation. On an outward voyage to the East 
 and West-Indies, indeed, the proper course is 
 more to the southward, than will well consist with 
 touching in North -America ; yet the deviation 
 for that purpose is not a very formidable incon- 
 venience. Prior to the independency of that 
 country, it was not unusual for our own outward 
 bound West-Indiamen to call there, for the pur- 
 pose of filling up their vacant room with lumber 
 or provisions. 
 
 But this new neutral country, though so hap- 
 pilv placed as an entrepot, is obviously no place 
 for a fictitious destination, on any voyage between 
 the colonies and Europe ; because, as it lies mid- 
 way between them, the pretext would be worn out 
 long before its end was accomplished. 
 
 From these causes it has naturally happened 
 that the protection given by the American flag, 
 to the intercourse between our European enemies 
 and their colonies, since the instruction of Jauuary, 
 1794, has chiefly been in the way of a double 
 vovagc, in which America has been the half-wav 
 house, or central point of communication. The 
 fabrics and commodities of France, Spain, and 
 Holland, have been brought under American co- 
 lours to ports in the United States ; and from
 
 44 
 
 thence re-exported, under the same flag, for the 
 supply of the hostile colonies. Again, the pro- 
 duce of those colonies has been brought, in a like 
 manner, to the American ports, and from thence 
 re-shipped to Europe. 
 
 The royal instruction of 1798, however, opened 
 to the enemy a new method of eluding capture 
 under the American flag, and enabled it to per- 
 form that service for him, in a more compendious 
 manner. The ports of this kingdom, were now 
 made legitimate places of destination, to neutrals 
 coming with cargoes of produce directly from the 
 hostile colonies. 
 
 Since it was found necessary or prudent, 
 to allow European neutrals to carry on this trade 
 directly to their own countries, it was, per- 
 haps, deemed a palliation of the evils likely to 
 follow, and even some compensation for them in 
 the way of commercial advantage, to obtain for 
 ourselves a share of those rich imports, which were 
 now likely to be poured more abundantly than 
 ever, through our own very costly courtesy, into 
 the neutral ports of Europe. We had submitted 
 to a most dangerous mutilation of our belligerent 
 rights, to gratify the rapacity of other nations ; 
 and we felt, perhaps, like a poor seaman, men- 
 tioned by Goldsmith, who, in a famine at sea, 
 being obliged to spare a certain part of his body to 
 feed his hungry companions, reasonably claimed
 
 45 
 
 a right to have the first steak for himself. Or, per- 
 haps, the motive was a desire more effectually to 
 conciliate America. If so, we were most ungrate- 
 fully requited ; but in the other case, the error 
 flowed from a very copious source of our national 
 evils, though one too plausible and popular, to be 
 incidentally developed in a work like this : I mean 
 a morbid excess of sensibility to immediate com- 
 mercial profit. The Dutch, who during a siege 
 sold gunpowder to their enemies, were not the 
 only people who have sometimes preferred their 
 trade to their political safety. 
 
 The use immediately made by the American 
 merchants of this new licence, was to make a pre- 
 tended destination to British ports, that conve- 
 nient cover for a voyage from the hostile colonies 
 to Europe, which their flag could not otherwise 
 give ; and thus to rival the neutrals of the old 
 world, in this method of protecting the West-India 
 trade of our enemies, while they nearly engrossed" 
 the other. The destination of American West-In- 
 diamen " to Cowes, and a market," became as pro- 
 verbial a cheat in the Admiralty Courts, as ring 
 dropping is at Bow-street. 
 
 They often indeed really did call at Cowes, or 
 some other port in the channel : but it was in ge- 
 neral, only to facilitate through a communication 
 with their agents here, and by correspondence with 
 their principal in the hostile countries, the true
 
 46 
 
 ultimate purpose of the voyage. They might even 
 sell in our markets, when the prices made it clear- 
 ly the interest of their French or Spanish employers 
 to do so ; but whether Havre, Amsterdam, Ham- 
 burgh, or London, might be the more inviting 
 market, the effect of touching in England was 
 commonly only that of enabling them to deter- 
 mine, in what way the indulgence of this country 
 might be used with the greatest profit to our ene- 
 mies. 
 
 This last extension of our ruinous liberality 
 has not, in the present war, been renewed. The 
 method of the double voyage, therefore, which 
 was always the most prevalent, is now the only 
 mode, of American neutralization in the colonial 
 trade. 
 
 It maj^ be thought, perhaps, that this allowed 
 method of eluding our hostilities, might have 
 contented the French and Spaniards, and their 
 neutralizing agents, as a deliverance from all the 
 perils of capture, sufficiently cheap and safe, to sa- 
 tisfy the enemies of this great maritime country, 
 when they durst not show a pendant on the 
 ocean. To neutrals, trading on their own ac- 
 count, this qualified admission into the rich com- 
 merce of both the Indies, may seem to have 
 been a boon advantageous enough ; when con- 
 sidered as a gratuitous gain derived from the 
 misfortunes of other nations. But moderation.
 
 47 
 
 is the companion of justice, and belongs not to 
 the selfish spirit of encroachment ; nor is success- 
 ful usurpation ever satisfied, while there remains 
 with the injured party one un violated, or unabdi- 
 cated right. 
 
 America, we have seen, like other neutral 
 powers, was permitted to carry the produce of 
 the hostile colonies to her own ports, and from 
 thence might export it to Europe ; nay, even to 
 France and Spain. She was also at liberty to 
 import the manufactures of those countries, and 
 might afterwards export the same goods to their 
 colonies ; but the word directly, in the royal 
 instruction, as well as the spirit of these relaxa- 
 tions, in general, plainly required, that there 
 should be a bona fide shipment from, or delivery 
 in, the neutral country — in other words, that the 
 voyage should actually, and not colourably, ori- 
 ginate, or terminate, in such a way as the subsist- 
 ing rule allowed. 
 
 The American merchants, however, very early 
 began, in their intercourse with the Spaniards, 
 to elude the spirit of the restriction, by call- 
 ing at their own ports, merely in order to ob- 
 tain new clearances ; and then proceeding for- 
 ward to Spain with produce which they had ship- 
 ped in her colonies; or to the latter, with supplies, 
 which were taken on board in Spain. 
 
 It seems scarcely necessary to show, that, by
 
 48 
 
 this practice, the licence accorded by the Bri- 
 tish government was grossly abused. What was 
 the principle of the relaxation ? — an indulgence 
 expressly to the commerce of neutral countries. 
 What was the object of the restriction? — To pre- 
 vent, as much as consisted with that indulgence, 
 the intercourse between the European enemy and 
 his colonies, in neutral ships. But the mere 
 touching, or stopping, of a ship at any country, 
 does not make her voyage a branch of the trade 
 of that country. Our East-India trade, is not the 
 trade of St. Helena. Neither was it any restraint 
 on the intercourse between the enemy and his 
 colonies, such as could gravely be supposed to be 
 meant by the restriction, to oblige him merely to 
 drop anchor, at some neutral port in his way. 
 
 According to some recent doctrines, indeed, 
 which that great champion of neutral rights, the 
 murderer of the Due D'Enghein, inculcates, trade 
 in a neutral vessel, be the voyage what it may, is 
 neutral trade ; but America does not, in the pre- 
 sent case at least, assert that preposterous rule ; for 
 she tacitly professes to acquiesce in the restriction 
 in question, when, in point of form, she complies 
 with it ; and the neutrality of the trade, in the sense 
 of the royal instruction, is plainly a local idea : — it 
 is the commerce, not of the ship, but of the coun- 
 try, to which indulgence was meant to be given. 
 The only question therefore, is, whether the trade
 
 49 
 
 between France or Spain and their colonies, be- 
 comes the trade of America, merely because the 
 ships which conduct it, call at one of her ports 
 on their way. 
 
 Bv the merchants and custom-house officers 
 of the United States, the line of neutral duty in 
 this case was evidently not misconceived ; for the 
 departures from it, were carefully concealed, by 
 artful and fraudulent contrivance. When a ship 
 arrived at one of their ports, to neutralize a voy- 
 age that fell within the restriction, e. g. from a 
 Spanish colony to Spain, all her papers were im- 
 mediately sent on shore, or destroyed. Not one 
 document was left, which could disclose the fact 
 that her cargo had been taken in at a colonial 
 port : and new bills of lading, invoices, clearances, 
 and passports, were put on board, all importing 
 that it had been shipped in America. Nor were 
 official certificates, or oaths wanting, to support 
 the fallacious pretence. The fraudulent precau- 
 tion of the agents often went ^o far, as to dis- 
 charge all the officers and crew, and sometimes 
 even the master, and to ship an entire new com- 
 pany in their stead, who, being ignorant of the for- 
 mer branch of the voyage, could, in case of exa- 
 mination or capture, support the new papers by 
 their declarations and oaths, as far as their know- 
 ledge extended, with a safe conscience. Thus, 
 the ship and cargo were sent to sea again, per- 
 il
 
 50 
 
 haps within eight-and-forty hours from the time 
 of her arrival, in a condition to defy the scrutiny 
 of any British cruizer, by which she should be 
 stopped and examined in the course of her pas- 
 sage to Europe. 
 
 By stratagems like these, the commerce be- 
 tween our enemies and their colonies was carried 
 on. even more securely, than if neutrals had been 
 permitted to conduct it in the most open manner, 
 in a direct and single voyage. 
 
 In that case, both the terms of the voyage being 
 hostile, and the papers put on board at the port of 
 shipment, being derived from an enemy, or from 
 agents in the hostile country, the suspicion of a 
 visiting officer would be broad awake : and a 
 strict examination, even though the vessel should 
 be brought into port for the purpose, would, ge- 
 nerally speaking, be justifiable and safe. The al- 
 leged right of property in a neutral claimant of 
 the cargo, might also in such a case be examined 
 up to its acquisition in the hostile countrv, by the 
 light of the evidence found on board. Whereas, 
 in the latter branch of the voyage that has been 
 described, all ordinary means of detecting the 
 property of an enemy under its neutral garb, are 
 as effectually withdrawn, as if the transaction had 
 really begun in a neutral port. 
 
 The illegal plan of the voyage itself is ve- 
 ry easily concealed during its anterior branch,
 
 51 
 
 since the papers then point only to the neutral 
 country, as the ultimate place of destination ; and 
 there is not the least necessity for hazarding a 
 disclosure to the master, much less to the crew, 
 that the real intention is different. 
 
 With such facilities, it is not strange that this 
 fraudulent practice should have prevailed to a 
 great extent, before it met the attention of our 
 prize tribunals. In fact, though often since inci- 
 dentally discovered in the course of legal pro- 
 ceedings, it can scarcely ever be detected in the 
 first instance by a captor at sea, so as to be a 
 ground of seizure, unless by an accident such a* 
 once brought it to judicial notice. 
 
 A ship, with a valuable cargo of sugars from 
 the Havannah, on her passage to Charleston. 
 the port to which she belonged, was stopped 
 and examined by a British privateer. As the pa- 
 pers were perfectly clear, and concurred with the 
 master's declaration, in showing that the cargo 
 was o"oinsr on account of the American owners to 
 Charleston, where the voyage was to end, the 
 ship was immediately released. 
 
 After a stay of a few days at that port, she 
 sailed again with the same identical cargo, bound 
 apparently to Hamburgh, perhaps, in fact, to 
 Spain ; but with an entire new set of papers from 
 the owners and the Custom-House, all importing 
 that the cargo, not one package of which had been
 
 in fact landed since she left the Havannah, had 
 been taken on hoard at Charleston. The fact al- 
 so was solemnly attested on oath. 
 
 Soon after the commencement of this second 
 part of her voyage, she was again brought to by a 
 British cruizer ; and her papers, aided by the 
 master's asseverations, would doubtless have in- 
 duced a second dismissal, but for one awkward 
 coincidence. It happened that the visiting cruiz- 
 er, was the very same privateer by which she had 
 been boarded on her voyage from the Havannah; 
 and whose commander was able to recognize and 
 identify both her and her cargo, as those he had 
 lately examined. 
 
 This case came by appeal before the lords 
 commissioners ; who finding the above facts clear 
 and undisputed, thought them a sufficient ground 
 for condemning the property. They held that the 
 touching at a neutral port, merely for the purpose 
 of colourably commencing a new voyage, and 
 thereby eluding the restrictive rule of law, in a 
 branch of it not relaxed by the royal instructions, 
 could not legalize the transaction; but that it 
 ought nevertheless to be considered as a direct and 
 continuous voyage from the hostile colony to 
 Europe, and consequently illegal *. 
 
 * Case ef the Mercury, Roberts, at the Cockpit, July 23, 1800, 
 an<l Jan. 13, 1802.
 
 .53 
 
 In this case, the detection being full and con- 
 clusive, it would have been in vain for the claimants 
 to contend that there had been an actual impor- 
 tation into America, with an intention to land and 
 sell the cargo. But oilier cases occurred, v\ herein 
 the evidence taken in the prize court brought to 
 light less circumstantially the fact, that the 
 captured cargoes, though ostensibly shipped in 
 America, had been previously brought in the same 
 bottoms, and on account of the same persons, from 
 Spain, or a Spanish colony ; and in these cases an 
 explanation was offered by the American claim- 
 ants, to which the court of admiralty, and the lords 
 commissioners, in their great indulgence, thought 
 proper to listen. It was alleged, that the impor- 
 tations into America were genuine, and were made 
 with a view to the sale of the cargoes in that country; 
 but that in consequence of a fall of price in the 
 markets, the importers found themselves unable 
 to sell without loss ; and therefore were obliged, 
 contrary to their original design, to re-export the 
 cargoes, and send them to Europe or the West- 
 Indies, according to the now acknowledged desti- 
 nations. 
 
 An excuse like this, had it been offered even 
 in the first instance, with a gratuitous disclosure 
 of the anterior branch of the transaction, might 
 reasonably have been received with diffidence; 
 especially when it was considered, that the goods
 
 54 
 
 composing these cargoes, were of a kind not gene- 
 rally consumed in America, and such as could 
 be in common demand there only for the purpose 
 of re-exportation to that very country, to which 
 thej' were now actually proceeding. Such is noto- 
 riously the case, in respect of the white sugars of 
 the Havannah, and also in respect of the planta- 
 tion stores, and supplies usually sent to the foreign 
 West-Indies from Europe, of which these cargoes 
 were chiefly composed ; and it was evidently very 
 unnatural, that a merchant, found in actual con- 
 nexion both with the hostile colonies, and with 
 the hostile or prohibited port in Europe, as an 
 importer from the one, and an exporter to the 
 other, should have been driven unintentionally, 
 and by necessity alone, into that very convenient 
 and profitable course of trade, which he was found 
 actually pursuing. 
 
 But when the studied suppression of the former 
 branch of the transaction, is taken into the ac- 
 count ; and when it is considered that this excuse 
 was commonly brought forward in the last in- 
 stance, to avert the penal consequences of a dis- 
 covery accidentally made in the prize court ; the 
 pretence must be admitted to have been in the 
 highest degree suspicious, if not absolutely un- 
 worthy of credit. 
 
 Yet such has been the extreme lenity of those 
 tribunals, of whose severity the enemy and his
 
 55 
 
 neutralizing agents have the effrontery to com- 
 plain, that these excuses were hot rejected as in- 
 credible ; and the claimants were indulged, when 
 necessary, with time to establish them in point of 
 fact, by further proofs from America. 
 
 When an actual attempt to sell the eargo in 
 the neutral port, has been in such cases alleged, 
 and in any degree verified, that fact has been held 
 sufficient to support the general excuse. A cargo 
 of Spanish manufactures shipped at Bilboa, and 
 taken when proceeding from America to the Ha- 
 vannah, on account of the same shippers, was re- 
 stored on evidence of an attempt to sell, having 
 been made by the claimant, on the ship's arrival 
 at Philadelphia; though the cargo chiefly consist- 
 ed of nails for sugar boxes, an article consumed 
 only in the Spanish West-Indies *. 
 
 Certain other general criteria of a bona fide im- 
 portation into the neutral country, have been in 
 these cases admitted and required. 
 
 These who are conversant with the business of 
 the prize court, well know, that affidavits in fur- 
 ther proof, are never wanting to support every 
 ease that a claimant may be allowed to set up. 
 It may be even asserted with truth, that property 
 
 * Cr.sc. ofthe F.aglr, Week?, st the Cockpit, May 15th, 1S02.
 
 .50 
 
 taken under neutral colours is scarcely ever con- 
 demned, but by a sentence which in effect im- 
 peaches the neutral merchants and their agents, of 
 wilful and elaborate perjury. Nor is the shocking 
 fact surprising, if it be considered, that every 
 man who undertakes, for a commission, to cover 
 the. enemy's property under neutral papers, en- 
 gages beforehand to furnish all the perjury that 
 may be necessary to support his claim in case of 
 capture, as an essential part of the contract. 
 Courts of prize, therefore, wisely lay much stress 
 on such probable presumptions as may arise from 
 undisputed facts ; especially such facts as are col- 
 lateral to the main transaction, of a public na- 
 ture, and not likely to have been contrived for 
 the purpose of imposition. 
 
 Accordingly, in the class of cases we are con- 
 sidering, it was held of great importance to show, 
 that the cargo had been landed in the neutral 
 port, that the duties on importation had been paid, 
 and that the first insurance had been made for a 
 voyage to terminate in the neutral country. In 
 a case of this description, which came before Sir 
 William Scott early in 1800, he laid great stress 
 on these circumstances, especially the two former; 
 regarding them as the clearest general indica- 
 tions of the original intention on which he could 
 found his judgment ; and accordingly, on proof 
 being exhibited that the goods in question had
 
 57 
 
 been landed, and the duties for them paid in 
 America he restored the property *. The lords 
 commissioners, in subsequent cases before them, 
 were of the same opinion ; and therefore it became 
 tacitly a general rule, that when the excuse in 
 question was set up by a claimant, he must sup- 
 port it by showing those ordinary features of a 
 sincere and genuine importation. 
 
 But, unfortunately, such practical rules as are 
 devised for the better discovery of truth, and sup- 
 pression of fraud in the prize court, are liable to 
 lose their effect as soon as they become known 
 in neutral countries; for persons meditating future 
 imposition, will adapt their conduct prospectively 
 to the rule of practice, so as to prepare the means 
 of furnishing, in case of necessity, the proofs which 
 they know will be required. 
 
 The landing the cargo in America, and re-ship- 
 ping it in the same bottom, were no very costly 
 precautions for better securing the merchant 
 against the peril of capture and detection in the 
 latter branch of these important voyages. In fact, 
 it is commonly a necessary proceeding, in or- 
 der to clear, and refit, or repair the vessel ; for 
 in the West-India trade, ships must usually go into 
 dock to be careened, and receive all necessary re- 
 
 * Case of the Polly, Lasky, at the Admiralty, Feb. 5th, 1300. 
 
 2 Robinson's Reports, 36, 
 
 T
 
 58 
 
 pairs, once in every voyage. American owners, 
 therefore, whose ships are constantly employed in 
 this circuitous commerce between the West-Indies 
 and Europe, must, to maintain them in proper con- 
 dition, either submit to the great expense and dis- 
 advantage of careening and repairing in a foreign 
 and belligerent country, or embrace the opportu- 
 nity of doing so on the arrival at their own ports, 
 either on the outward voyage from Europe, or 
 the return. It is, probably, so much cheaper to 
 dock their ships in America, than in Spain or the 
 West-Indies, as to compensate them for the ex- 
 pense of landing and re-shipping the cargo. 
 
 The laying a foundation for the necessary evi- 
 dence, in regard to insurance, was a still easier 
 work : for though at first they sometimes insured 
 the whole intended voyage, with liberty to touch 
 in America, it was afterwards found, in conse- 
 quence perhaps of the captures and discoveries 
 we have noticed, to be much safer for the under- 
 writers, and consequently cheaper in point of 
 premium to the owners, to insure separately the 
 two branches of the voyage; in which case, Ame- 
 rica necessarily appeared by the policies on the 
 first branch, to be the place of ultimate destina- 
 tion; and on the last, to be that of original shipment. 
 
 The payment of duties, then, was the only re- 
 maining badge of the simulated intention for 
 which the merchants had to provide ; and here
 
 59 
 
 they found facilities from the port officers and 
 government of the United States, such as obviated 
 every inconvenience. On the arrival of a cargo 
 destined for re-exportation in the course of this 
 indirect commerce, they were allowed to land the 
 goods, and even to put them in private ware- 
 houses, without paying any part of the duties j 
 and without any further trouble, than that of 
 giving a bond, with condition that if the goods 
 should not be re-exported, the duties should be 
 paid. On their re-shipment and exportation, of- 
 ficial clearances were given, in which no mention 
 was made that the cargo consisted of bonded or 
 debentured goods, which had previously been en- 
 tered for re-exportation ; but the same general 
 forms were used, as on an original shipment of 
 goods which had actually paid duties in America. 
 Nor was this all ; for, in the event of capture and 
 further inquiry respecting the importation into 
 America, the collectors and other officers were ac- 
 commodating enough solemnly to certify, that the 
 duties had been actually paid or secured to the 
 United States ; withholding the fact, that the 
 bonds had been afterwards discharged on the pro- 
 duction of debentures, or other official instruments, 
 certifying the re-exportation of the goods. 
 
 By these means, the American merchant, whe- 
 ther trading on his own account, or as an agent 
 for the enemy, was enabled securely to carry on
 
 60 
 
 a commerce, such as the royal instructions were 
 far from meaning to tolerate. If by any accident 
 or inadvertency, the preceding branch of the 
 voyage should be discovered, he had an excuse at 
 hand, such as would be accepted by the British 
 prize court ; and which he was prepared to sup- 
 port by such evidence, as he knew beforehand 
 would suffice. 
 
 But rules of practice, which have been devised 
 by any court, for the guidance and assistance of 
 ilS own judgment on questions of fact, can evi- 
 dently not be binding on the court itself, when 
 discovered to be no longer conducive to that 
 end ; much less, when they are found to be 
 made subservient to the purposes of imposition 
 and fraud. The lords commissioners of appeal, 
 therefore, finding it manifest in a recent case, 
 that the alleged importation into Salem, of a 
 cargo which had been shipped in Spain, and 
 afterwards re-shipped for the Havannah in the 
 same bottom, was wholly of a colourable kind; 
 and that, notwithstanding the usual clearances 
 and certificates, the duties had not been final- 
 ly paid to the American custom-house ; re- 
 jected the claim, and condemned the ship and 
 cargo *. 
 
 * Case of the Essex, — Orme, at the Cockpit, May 22, 1805. 
 There were in this case great doubts as to the neutrality of the 
 property ; and their lordships did not express on what ground they
 
 61 
 
 In this case, as in others of the same descrip- 
 tion, there was found on board an affidavit of the 
 proprietor, stating, that the goods had been 
 " laden on board from stores and wharves at Sa- 
 " lem, and that the duties thereon were secured to 
 " the United States, or paid, according to law." 
 Yet it afterwards appeared, on his own admission, 
 that he had only given the usual bond on the en- 
 try of the cargo from Barcelona ; which, as we 
 have seen, is a security to re-export, rather than 
 to pay duties on the cargo, and which had been 
 accordingly cancelled on the re-exportation. 
 
 Two other American cases were soon after 
 heard at the Admiralty, in which, under similar 
 circumstances, the learned judge of that court 
 made similar decrees ; holding, that this mode of 
 landing, and paying or securing duties on, the 
 cargoes in America, was not sufficient to consti- 
 tute an importation into the neutral country, so 
 as to break the continuity of the voyage from the 
 French colonies to Europe, and thereby legalize 
 the transaction under the indulgent instruction 
 now in force : the intention of the parties ap- 
 parently being to elude the legal restriction *. 
 
 decided ; but their sentence was understood at the bar to have been 
 founded on the illegality of the trade. 
 
 * Cases of the Enoch and the Rowena, at the Admiralty, July 23, 
 1805.
 
 62 
 
 It seems impossible for any man seriously to 
 disapprove of these decisions, without denying 
 the validity of the rule of law, which it is the 
 purpose of these colourable importations into 
 America to evade — a rule which, as we have seen, 
 is acquiesced in by the neutral powers themselves. 
 
 The payment or non-payment of duties in a 
 neutral country cannot, of itself, vary our belli- 
 gerent rights ; nor can the mere landing and re- 
 shipment of goods, without a change of property 
 or intention, give to the owner any right of 
 carriage which he did not previously possess. — 
 Those circumstances consequently were never re- 
 garded in the prize court as of any intrinsic or 
 substantive importance ; they were merely con- 
 sidered as evidence of the alleged primary inten- 
 tion of the neutral importer ; and that intention 
 was inquired into only for his benefit, in order to 
 absolve him from strong general presumptions 
 against the fairness and legality of the voyage. It 
 would therefore have been inconsistent and prepos- 
 terous, to give to any or all of those circumstances 
 any justificatory etfect, when they were found not 
 at all to support the favourable conclusions which 
 had been originally drawn from them ; but ra- 
 ther, on the contrary, to confirm the general 
 adverse presumptions, which they had been once 
 supposed to repel. When it was found that the 
 duties had been secured, not in a way natu-
 
 63 
 
 rally applicable*,to goods meant to be sold and 
 consumed in America, but in a mode devised for 
 the special convenience of importers intending a 
 re-exportation, the suspicion that the claimant 
 originally meant to continue the voyage, as he 
 eventually did, was obviously strengthened, if not 
 absolutely confirmed. 
 
 If the justice or consistency of our prize tri- 
 bunals in these cases, needed a further defence, it 
 might be found in the great frequency, I might 
 say universality, of the excuse which they had too 
 indulgently allowed. The credit of the main 
 pretext itself, was worn out by frequency of use. 
 
 A man on whose person a stolen watch should 
 be found, might allege that he had picked it up 
 iirthe street, and might find probable evidence to 
 satisfy a magistrate that his defence was well- 
 founded : but what if he were found possessed of 
 ten or twenty watches, stolen at different times, 
 from different persons, and should oiler in respect 
 of them all, the same identical explanation r The 
 same evidence would now be reasonably regarded 
 as insufficient to deliver him from the highly ag- 
 gravated suspicion. 
 
 Or, to borrow an illustration from a case more 
 nearly parallel, and one which is practically noto- 
 rious : — A neutral vessel is taken in the attempt 
 to enter a blockaded port, which lies wide of her 
 course to that place to which she is ostensibly des-
 
 64 
 
 tined : the excuse offered to the Raptor is, that a 
 storm had driven her out of her proper course; and 
 that, being in distress, she was going into the block- 
 aded port of necessity, in order to refit. For 
 once, or twice, perhaps, such excuses might gain 
 credit, on the oaths of the master and his people ; 
 but a multitude of vessels are taken in the same 
 attempt ; and all their masters give precisely the 
 same excuse. They have all met with a storm ; 
 and are all obliged by distress, to put into the pro- 
 hibited port. Surely the commanders of the block- 
 ading squadron, and the judges of the prize courts, 
 may now justifiably shut their ears to this stale 
 pretext ; unless it comes supported by more than 
 ordinary evidence. 
 
 So in the case before us, when it has been 
 found, during several years, that all American 
 merchants detected in carrying from their own 
 country to Europe, produce which they had im- 
 ported into the former in the same bottoms, from 
 the colonies of our enemies, have exactly the 
 ?ame exculpatory facts to allege ; the defence, on 
 this ground alone, might justly forfeit the cre- 
 dit which it in the first instance received. It 
 would be strange indeed, if so many men had 
 all been accidentally, and reluctantly, driven to 
 consult their own interest to the utmost possible 
 advantage, through a disappointment in their more 
 abstinent views ; and compelled to go eventually
 
 65 
 
 to the best markets, instead of selling, as they de- 
 signed, at the worst. 
 
 Too much time may perhaps appear to have 
 been spent on the history of these circuitous voy- 
 ages, which, though an extensive, form but a sin- 
 gle branch, of the abuses I wish to expose. 
 
 It was however not unimportant to show in it, 
 the true subject of those violent clamours with 
 which the public ear has been lately assailed. The 
 recent invectives of the Moniteur, and the com- 
 plaints of the American merchants, which have 
 been echoed by our own newspapers, and falsely 
 alleged to have produced concessions from his Ma- 
 jesty's government, have all had no sounder foun- 
 dation, than the late conduct of our prize courts 
 as here explained, in regard to this indirect trade. 
 The sole offence is, that those tribunals, finding 
 themselves to have been deceived for years past by 
 fallacious evidence, have resolved to be cheated in 
 the same wav no longer. It is on this account 
 only, and the consequent capture of some Ameri- 
 can West-Indiamen supposed to be practising the 
 old fraud, that we are accused of insulting the neu- 
 tral powers, of innovating on the acknowledged 
 law of nations, and of treating as contraband of 
 war, the produce of the West-India Islands. 
 
 Though these collusive voyages, are the most 
 general abuse of the indulgence given by the 
 
 K
 
 66 
 
 royal instructions, and are a mode of intercourse 
 with the hostile colonies, peculiarly productive of 
 a fraudulent carriage for the enemy on his own 
 account under neutral disguise, the suppression of 
 the practice would by no means remedy the enor- 
 mous evils which result from that intercourse in 
 general. 
 
 An adherence by our prize tribunals to their 
 recent precedents, will no doubt put a stop to the 
 re-exportation from neutral ports, of the same co- 
 lonial produce, in the same identical bottom, and 
 on account of the same real or ostensible owners 
 by whom it was imported ; but a change of pro- 
 perty in the neutral country will be a false pretence 
 easily made, and not easily detected : nor will the 
 substitution of a different vessel, add very much to 
 the trouble or expense of the transaction. Two 
 ships arriving about the same time, in the same 
 harbour, may commodiously exchange their car- 
 goes, and proceed safely with them to the same 
 places of ulterior destination. In short, new me- 
 thods of carrying the produce of the hostile colo- 
 nies to any part of Europe, will not be wanting, nor 
 will there be any dearth of means for amply sup- 
 plying those colonies with the manufactures of 
 their parent states, so long as both are permitted 
 not only to be brought to, but exported from, a 
 neutral country, according to the existing in- 
 struction.
 
 67 
 
 Having shown how much has been indulgently 
 conceded to the neutral flag, in respect of the co- 
 lonial trade of our enemies, and how much more 
 it has licentiously and fraudulently assumed, I 
 proceed to notice, as briefly as possible, the high- 
 ly alarming effects. 
 
 The mischief, to correct which the rule of the 
 war 1756 was first applied, was of a partial and 
 limited kind. In that war, neutral ships, though 
 admitted into some of the colonial ports of 
 France, were by no means the sole carriers of 
 their produce or supplies. The enemy continued 
 to employ his own commercial flag, as far as his 
 inadequate power of protecting it extended ; and 
 neutrals were rather partners in, than assignees of, 
 the national monopoly. 
 
 In the American war, their participation in this 
 commerce, was still more limited. 
 
 But during the last war, and in the present, a 
 far more comprehensive innovation has taken 
 place. France and Holland have totally ceased 
 to trade under their own flags, to or from the ports 
 of any of their colonies ; and have apparently as- 
 signed the whole of these branches of their com- 
 merce, to the merchants of neutral states. 
 
 Spain, though with more hesitation, and by 
 gradual advances, has nearly made as entire a 
 transfer of all her trade with her colonics on the 
 Atlantic ; and if any reservation now remains, it
 
 68 
 
 is in respect of some part only of the specie and 
 bullion, for conveying which a ship of war or two 
 may be occasionally risked. Even these most va- 
 luable exports have been largely intrusted to the 
 neutral flag, at Vera-Cruz, Carthagena, La Plata, 
 and other ports ; while the still more important 
 commerce of the Havannah, and Cuba in general, 
 has known no other protection *. 
 
 Of the French colonies in the Antilles, of Cay- 
 enne, and Dutch Guiana, while that country was 
 hostile to us, of the Isles of France and Bourbon, 
 of Batavia, Manilla, and of all other Asiatic settle- 
 ments which have remained under a flag hostile 
 to this country, it may be truly affirmed that neu- 
 trals have been their only carriers. The mercan- 
 tile colours of their respective countries, and of 
 their confederates, have been absolute strangers 
 in their ports. Even the gum trade of Senegal, 
 has been made over to neutrals, and its garrison 
 supplied by them in return f . 
 
 But why should I enumerate the particulars of 
 this unprecedented case, when it may be truly af- 
 firmed in few words, that not a single merchant, 
 ship under a flag inimical to Great-Britain, now 
 crosses the equator, or traverses the Atlantic 
 Ocean. 
 
 * Cases of the Flora, Arnold, Gladiator, Emelia, Vera Cruz, &c. 
 &.c. at the Cockpit, 
 f Case of the Juliana. Carstcn, at t : :« Cockpit, 1803.
 
 69 
 
 Though to the generality of my readers this 
 proposition may seem extraordinary, and perhaps 
 too strange to be believed, yet it forms only part 
 of a still more comprehensive and singular truth — 
 With the exception only of a very smalt portion of 
 the coasting trade of our enemies, not a mercantile 
 sail of any description, now enters, or clears from 
 their ports in any part of the globe, but under neu- 
 tral colours. My more immediate business how- 
 ever is with that colonial trade, which subsists by 
 our indulgence alone ; and which fraud and per- 
 jury could not rescue from our cruizers, if we did 
 not forbear to exercise our clear belligerent 
 rights. 
 
 The commerce which thus eludes the grasp of 
 our naval hostilities, is not only rich and various, 
 but of a truly alarming magnitude. 
 
 The mercantile registers at Lloyd's alone, might 
 sufficiently manifest its great extent ; for they an- 
 nounce every week, and almost every day, nu- 
 merous arrivals of ships from America in the 
 ports of Holland and France ; and it is noto- 
 rious that they are freighted, for the most part, 
 with sugar, coffee, and the other rich productions 
 of the French and Spanish West-Indies. Indeed, 
 when the harvests of Europe ha\c not failed so 
 much as to occasion a large demand for the flour 
 and grain of North America, that country has 
 scarcely any native commodities, tobacco excepted,
 
 70 
 
 that can be the subjects of such a commerce. 
 These vessels return chiefly in ballast ; but the 
 portion of goods they obtain as return cargoes, 
 are stores and manufactures, destined for the sup- 
 ply of the hostile colonies though previously to 
 pass through the neutralizing process in America. 
 
 Enormous is the amount of the produce of the 
 new world, thus poured into the south, as well as 
 the north of Europe, under cover of the neutral 
 (lag ! At Cadiz, at Barcelona, and the other Spa- 
 nish ports, whether within or without the Mediter- 
 ranean, neutral vessels are perpetually importing, 
 unless when interrupted by our blockades, the 
 sugar of the Havannah, the cocoa, indigo, and. 
 hides of South America, the dollars and ingots of 
 Mexico and Peru ; and returning with European 
 manufactures, chiefly the rivals of our own. East- 
 India goods, are also imported by these com- 
 mercial auxiliaries into Spain ; but still more co- 
 piously, into Holland and Erance. 
 
 Nor is it only in their own ports, that our ene- 
 mies receive the exports of America, and of 
 Asia, in contempt of our maritime efforts. — ' 
 Hamburgh, Altona, Embden, Gottenburgh, Co- 
 penhagen, Lisbon, and various other neutral mar- 
 kets, are supplied, and even glutted with the pro- 
 duce of the West-Indies, and the fabrics of the 
 East, brought from the prosperous colonies of 
 powers hostile to this country. By the rivers and
 
 71 
 
 canals of Germany and Flanders, they are floated 
 into the warehouses of our enemies, or circulated 
 for the supply of their customers in neutral 
 countries. They supplant, or rival, the British 
 planter and merchant, throughout the continent 
 of Europe, and in all the ports of the Mediter- 
 ranean. They supplant even the manufactures of 
 Manchester, Birmingham, and Yorkshire; for the 
 looms and forges of Germany are put in action by 
 the colonial produce of our enemies, and are 
 rivalling us, by the ample supplies they send 
 under the neutral flag, to every part of the New 
 World. 
 
 Antwerp, a happy station for the exchange of 
 such merchandize, is now rapidly thriving under 
 the fostering care of Bonaparte. His efforts for 
 the restoration of its commerce, during the short 
 interval of peace, produced no very splendid ef- 
 fects ; but the neutral flags have proved far more 
 auspicious to the rising hopes of the Scheldt, than 
 the colours of Holland and France. Its port has 
 become the favourite haunt of the American West- 
 Indiamen, and profits in various ways, by the 
 sale of their valuable cargoes. 
 
 If we look beyond the Atlantic, and into the 
 Eastern Ocean, we shall find the sources of this 
 commerce, under the same benign auspices of the 
 neutral Hag, in the most thriving and productive
 
 state. Bonaparte has recently boasted, that Mar- 
 tinique and Guadaloupe are flourishing, in despite 
 of our hostilities, so much beyond all former ex- 
 perience, that, since 1789, they have actually 
 doubled their population *. Had he said the 
 same also of their produce, the boast perhaps 
 would have been far less unfounded than his as- 
 sertions usually are : but he ought to have added, 
 that since the first notice of the war, the French 
 flag has not brought them a barrel of flour, nor 
 exported a. hogshead of their sugar. Even the 
 ships in their harbours, that had been laden before 
 the new hostilities were announced, were osten- 
 sibly transferred with their cargoes to neutral 
 merchants, and sailed under neutral colours. 
 
 He has vaunted also, and with truth, the pros- 
 perous state of Cayenne, and of the Isles of France 
 and Reunion, once called Bourbon, whose prospe- 
 rity is owing to the same efficacious cause ; aided 
 by their becoming warehouses for the commerce 
 of Batavia. 
 
 The Spanish government is not so ostentatious; 
 but its colonies are quietly reaping the fruit of 
 that fortunate revolution, the suspension of their 
 prohibitory laws. The neutral flag gives to them 
 not only protection, but advantages before un- 
 
 * Extract from the Moniteur. in the London paper, t>f September 
 2d.
 
 73 
 
 known. The gigantic infancy of agriculture in 
 Cuba, far from being checked, is greatly aided 
 in its portentous growth during the war, by 
 the boundless liberty of trade, and the perfect 
 security of carriage. Even slaves from Africa are 
 copiously imported there, and doubtless also into 
 the French islands, under American colours. — 
 America indeed has prohibited this commerce, 
 and wishes to suppress it ; but our enemies can 
 find agents as little scrupulous of violating the law 
 of their own country, as the law of war ; and so 
 wide has been our complaisance to depredators on 
 our belligerent rights, that even the slave-trading 
 smuggler, has been allowed to take part of the 
 spoil *. 
 
 To the Spanish continental colonies also, war has 
 changed its nature : it has become the handmaid 
 of commerce, and the parent of plenty. Even 
 the distant province of La Plata, has been so glut- 
 ted with European imports, that the best manu- 
 factures have sold there at prices less than the 
 prime cost in the distant country from which they 
 came f . 
 
 In short, all the hostile colonies, whether Spanish, 
 
 * Cases of the Oxholm, Chance, &c. at the Cockpit. 
 
 f This fact has appeared in the evidence brought before our prize tri- 
 bunals, in the case of the Gladiator, Turner, at the Cockpit, in ISO?, and 
 in other r»use>. 
 
 1,
 
 74 
 
 French, or Batavian, derive from the enmity of 
 Great-Britain, their ancient scourge and terror, 
 not inconvenience but advantage : far from being 
 impoverished or distressed by our hostilities, as 
 formerly, they find in war the best sources of 
 supply, and new means of agricultural, as well as 
 commercial prosperity. 
 
 Happy has it been for them, and their parent 
 states, that the naval superiority of their enemy 
 has been too decisive to be disputed. 
 
 " Una salus victis, nullam sperare salutcm." 
 
 A fortunate despair, has alone saved them from ail 
 the ruinous consequences of an ineffectual strug- 
 gle ; and given them advantages, greater than 
 they could have hoped from a successful maritime 
 war. They may say to each other as Themis- 
 tocles to his children, when enriched, during his 
 exile, by the Persian monarch, " We should have 
 " been ruined, if we had not been undone." 
 
 It is singular enough, that the same policy 
 which the most celebrated French writers on co- 
 lonial affairs, earnestly recommended to Bona- 
 parte soon after the peace of Amiens, as the best 
 mean of promoting his favourite object, the re- 
 storation of the colonies and the marine; is that 
 which the war has benignantly forced upon him *. 
 
 * See Barre Saint Venant, Des Colonies Modernes, kc. and Memoircs 
 sir lei Colonics, par V. P. Malouet.
 
 75 
 
 He was as hostile as they wished, to the liberty of 
 the negroes ; but all their persuasion did not suf- 
 fice, to induce him to unfetter for a while the co- 
 lonial trade, till their powerful arguments were 
 seconded by a new maritime war. 
 
 Perhaps it may be supposed that we are at 
 least able to diminish the immediate profit of 
 that commerce, which we generously forbear to 
 obstruct ; by obliging our enemies to import their 
 colonial produce on dearer terms than formerly, 
 into the European markets. 
 
 But let it be considered, that in a mercantile 
 view, relative, not positive, expense on importa- 
 tion, is the criterion of loss or gain. If the price 
 of the commodity rises in proportion to the ad- 
 vance in that expense, the importer loses no- 
 thing : and if the war enhances the freight, and 
 other charges to the British, more than to the 
 French or Spanish merchant, then the latter may 
 derive a positive advantage from the general rise 
 in the neutral markets ; while, even in respect 
 of the home consumption, there will, in a national 
 view, be a balance of belligerent inconvenience 
 against us. 
 
 Now I fear the fact is, however strange it may 
 seem, that the advance made by the war in the 
 expense of importation into this country from the 
 British colonies, in respect of freight, insurance, 
 and all other charges taken together, is fully
 
 equal, if not superior, to that to which our ene- 
 mies are subjected in their covert and circuitous 
 trade. 
 
 The average freight from the British Leeward 
 Islands for sugars, immediately prior to the pre- 
 sent war, was four shillings and sixpence per cwt. ; 
 it is now about eight shillings ; an advance of 
 above 77 per cent. 
 
 The peace freights from the French and Spa- 
 nish colonies, were rather higher, on an average, 
 than from our own ; but I am unable to state in 
 what decree thev are advanced by the war : for, 
 in the circuitous mode of conveyance under neu- 
 tral colours, by which alone the produce of those 
 colonies now passes to Europe, the cargo is al- 
 ways either represented as belonging to the owner 
 of the ship, and, consequently not subject to 
 freight ; or as laden in pursuance of a charter 
 party, in which the ship is ostensibly freighted 
 on account of some other neutral merchant, for 
 a sum in gross. If a genuine bill of lading or 
 charter party is discovered, the freight is mixed 
 up with a neutralizing commission, from which it 
 cannot be distinguished. 
 
 It may, however, be safely affirmed, that the 
 freight, independently of the commission, is con- 
 siderably less in neutral, than in British ships, on 
 account of the comparative cheapness of the terms 
 on which the former are purchased, fitted out, and 
 insured.
 
 A comparison of the expense of insurance, at 
 these different periods, to our enemies, and to our 
 own merchants respectively, will be easier and 
 more material ; for the advance in the rates of in- 
 surance, when made against war risks, is a most 
 decisive criterion of the effect of a maritime war. 
 Here I have facts to submit to the reader, winch 
 an Englishman cannot state without mortitication, 
 though they are too important to be withheld. 
 
 Immediately prior to the present war, the pre- 
 mium of insurance from the Leeward Islands to 
 London, in a British ship, was two per cent.; from 
 Jamaica, four per cent. : at present, the former is 
 eight, to return four if the ship sails with convoy 
 and arrives safe ; the latter ten, to return five, on 
 the same condition. Single or running ships, if 
 unarmed, can scarcely be insured at all — if armed, 
 the premium varies so much according to the dif- 
 ferent estimates of the risk, that an average is 
 not easily taken. 
 
 At the former period, the insurance from the 
 French Windward Islands to Bourdeaux, was three 
 per cent. ; from St. Domingo, it was as high as live, 
 -and even six; from the Havannah, to Spain, four 
 per cent, in ships of the respective countries. 
 The existing premium on these direct voyages 
 cannot be stated ; since they are never openly in- 
 sured in this country : and as to the French and 
 Spanish commercial flags., they can no where be
 
 78 
 
 the subjects of insurance ; having vanished, as al- 
 ready observed, from the ocean : but at Lloyd's 
 Coffee-House, cargoes brought by the indirect 
 voyage from those now hostile colonies, under 
 neutral colours, is insured as follows: from Havan- 
 nah, to a port in North America, 3 per cent. ; from 
 North America to Spain, the like premium ; to- 
 gether, 6 per cent. * : and I apprehend there is lit- 
 tle or no difference, in the insurance of a like cir- 
 cuitous voyage from the French Windward Islands 
 to France. Of course, when the voyage is really 
 to end at a neutral, instead of a belligerent port, 
 in Europe, the premium on the latter branch of 
 it, is rather lessened than increased. 
 
 The compound premium of insurance with con- 
 voy, or the long premium, as it is called, is not 
 easily reducible to its proper absolute value, for 
 the purpose of this comparison ; since the risk 
 of missing convoy, is compounded of too many 
 chances, and combinations of chances, of various 
 kinds, physical, commercial, and political, to be 
 averaged by any calculation : but since the as- 
 sured, in the case of loss, as well as in that of 
 
 * This statement ha? reference to the month of August last, when the 
 author ean with confidence assert that these were the current premiums. 
 lie understands that they have since been raised in consequence of the re- 
 cent decisions in the Prize Court, which have been already noticed.
 
 79 
 
 missing convoy, has no return of premium, and 
 the return is always, with a deduction of the dif- 
 ference between pounds and guineas, or 5 per 
 cent, which is retained by the underwriter or bro- 
 ker, the premium of 10 to return 5, may be esti- 
 mated at near 7 per cent, and that of 8 to return 
 4, about one per cent, lower. 
 
 The consequence of these premises is, that the 
 sugars of Cuba are insured on their circuitous 
 carriage to Spain, at a less expense by 1 per cent, 
 than the sugars of Jamaica to England ; and those 
 of Martinique and Guadaloupe, probably, are in- 
 sured by a like route to France, on terms nearly 
 equal to the value of the long premium, on the 
 direct voyage from our own Leeward Islands. 
 
 Bat this is a conclusion far short of the true re- 
 sult of the comparison; for the English merchant 
 or planter, has also to pay the convoy duty, which 
 is evidently an additional price of his insurance 
 from the war risks of the passage. 
 
 The convoy duty on the outward voyage to the 
 West-Indies, is no less than four per cent. ; on the 
 homeward voyage, there is at present no duty 
 expressly for the protection of convoy ; but a new 
 war tax, by way of advance on the amount of 
 old duties, has been imposed on sugars imported, 
 and on all other articles of West-India produce ; 
 part of which advance was understood to be a 
 substitute for an express convoy duty, and on
 
 80 
 
 that priciple, it is not wholly drawn back on 
 exportation. 
 
 It would require an intricate calculation, as 
 well as data not easy to obtain, to determine what 
 is the amount of this charge to the importer, if 
 reduced into a specific tax for the protection of 
 convoy. I will, therefore, suppose it to be equal 
 to the convoy duty on the outward voyage : or 
 what will equally serve our purpose, let the in- 
 surance on an outward voyage to the West-Indies, 
 be supposed to be the same in point of premium, 
 as in fact it nearly, if not exactly is, with the in- 
 surance homeward : then the whole price of pro- 
 tection to the English West-India shipper, is in 
 the Jamaica trade, higher by five per cent, and in 
 the Leeward-Island trade, by four per cent, than 
 that for which the enemy planter or merchant, is 
 insured by the same underwriters, on the passage 
 of his goods to or from the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of the same islands. 
 
 But if we separate the price of the sea risk,, 
 or the warranty against those dangers which are 
 common both to peace and war, from the war 
 risk, or price of the insurance against detention 
 or capture by an enemy, the dilference will be 
 found still more highly adverse to that shipper, 
 whose sovereign is master of the sea : for as the 
 premium of insurance from Martinique to France, 
 before the war, was 3 per cent, while, from the
 
 81 
 
 British islands in the same part of the West-In- 
 dies, it was only 2 ; the advance occasioned by 
 the war to the British shipper, convoy duty being 
 reckoned as insurance, is no less than 8 per cent. ; 
 while to the French it is only 3 ; and if we 
 compare, on the facts before given, St. Domingo 
 with Jamaica, the advance to the former will be 
 found to be 7, to the latter, only about 1 per cent. 
 
 An objection here may naturally arise, to which 
 I regret that a shameful but conclusive answer, 
 can be given. Since the rates of insurance which 
 I have mentioned as the current prices of protec- 
 tion to the commerce of our enemies, when carri- 
 ed on under neutral colours, are those which are 
 paid in this country, to British underwriters, and 
 an insurance on the property of enemies is iller 
 gal, the hostile proprietor may be thought, not to 
 be effectually secured ; for should his secret be, 
 as in the event of capture it sometimes is, discos 
 vered, the insurance will be void. 
 
 Neutralizing agents, I first answer, are not so 
 incautious, after twelve years experience in their 
 business, and in the practice of the British prize 
 courts, as to expose their constituents very fre- 
 quently to detection. But such as this risk is, 
 the masqueraders have found an effectual mean 
 of avoiding it. Though a strange and opprobri- 
 ous truth, it is at Lloyd's ColTee-House perfectly 
 
 M
 
 82 
 
 notorious, that our underwriters consent to stand 
 between the naval hostilities of their country, 
 and the commerce of her disguised enemies, 
 by giving them an honorary guarantee against 
 the perils of capture and discovery. 
 
 The mode of the transaction is this : A policy 
 is executed, such as may be producible in any 
 court of justice ; for the property is insured as 
 neutral : but a private instrument is afterwards 
 signed by the underwriters, by which they 
 pledge themselves, that they will not, in case of 
 loss, dispute the neutrality of the property, or 
 avail themselves of any sentence pronouncing it 
 to be hostile. Sometimes, a verbal engagement 
 to this effect, is thought sufficient, but it has now 
 become a very general practice to reduce it into 
 writing ; and in the one mode, or the other, these 
 releases of the warranty or representation of 
 neutrality, are almost universal. It is true, such 
 stipulations are not binding in point of law : but 
 every one knows, that at Lloyd's Coffee-House, 
 as well as at the Stock Exchange and Newmar- 
 ket, those contracts, which the law will not en- 
 force, are on that very account, the most sacred 
 in the estimate of the parties, and the most invio- 
 lably observed. 
 
 The enemy, therefore, has as full security for 
 his low premium, as the British importer for his 
 high one ; nor is the comparative result of our pre-
 
 83 
 
 mises shaken by the expense of this special addi- 
 tion to the policy ; for in the rates of insurance 
 which I have given, the extra charge of the hono- 
 rary stipulation is included. For six per cent, 
 the British underwriter will warrant Spanish pro- 
 perty, knowing it to be such, from the Havannah 
 to Spain, by way of America ; though he receives 
 what is equal to seven, on British property, of the 
 same description, carried with convoy, and in fax 
 better bottoms, from Jamaica to London. 
 
 The proportion of this premium, which may 
 be reckoned as the price of the secret under- 
 taking, is, I understand, one per cent. It cannot 
 be much more ; since the excess of the whole 
 war premium above that which was paid on the 
 direct voyage in time of peace, is only two per 
 cent. The point is of no importance to our cal- 
 culation ; but it is striking to reflect, how small 
 an additional premium is enough to compensate 
 the insurer for the risk of the detection of hos- 
 tile property under the neutral cover, in this com- 
 modious new invented course of the colonial 
 trade. Can we wonder that Bonaparte should be 
 indignant and clamorous at the late attempts of 
 our prize court to restrain it ? 
 
 The underwriters of America have pretty 
 nearly agreed with our own, in the appreciation 
 of the trivial danger from British hostilities, in this 
 great branch of commerce. In July and August
 
 last, the average premiums at NeW-York and 
 Philadelphia, on the separate branches of the 
 double West-India voyage, without any war- 
 ranty of neutrality, w r ere about 3 I per cent, or 
 7 in the whole, from the West-Indies by way of 
 America to Europe. Insurance in that country, 
 is naturally a little dearer than in England ; and 
 the rates of premiums at Lloyd's, probably regu- 
 late, with an advance of about one per cent, in 
 general, the price of insurance in the United States. 
 
 It is impossible here to abstain from some di- 
 gressive remarks on the conduct of the British 
 underwriters. They are, certainly, in general, 
 very respectable men ; and comprise within their 
 body, merchants of great eminence in the most 
 "honourable walks of commerce. It is fair to pre- 
 sume, therefore, that their common concurrence 
 in any practice contrary to the duties of good 
 subjects, and upright men, can only proceed from 
 inadvertency or mistake. If so, I would con- 
 jure them to reflect seriously, on the nature and 
 -consequences of these honorary engagements, 
 •falsely so called, into which the secret agents of 
 our en-em ies have seduced them. 
 
 Let me remind them of the moral obligation, 
 -of obeying, in substance, as well as in form, the 
 law of their country ; and that the rule which 
 forbids the insurance of an enemy's property, 
 ^ot having been«founded solely on a regard to
 
 85 
 
 the safety of the underwriter's purse, they have nft 
 private right to wave its application. 
 
 Some persons, perhaps, may find an excuse or 
 palliation of this practice, to satisfy their own con- 
 sciences, in a doubt of the public utility of the law, 
 which they thus violate or evade ; for specious, 
 arguments have been heretofore offered, to prove 
 that a belligerent state, may advantageously per- 
 mit its subjects to insure the goods of an enemy 
 from capture ; and that pestilent moral heresy, 
 the bane of our age, which resolves every duty 
 into expediency, may possibly have its prose- 
 lytes at Lloyd's, as well as at Paris. With such 
 men as have imbibed this most pernicious error, 
 I have not time to reason on their own false 
 principles ; though the notion that it is politic to 
 insure an enemy, against our own hostilities, is 
 demonstrably erroneous ; and seems as strange a 
 paradox as any that the vain predilection for 
 oblique discovery ever suggested. I can only 
 offer to them a short argument, which ought 
 to be decisive, by observing that the wisdom of 
 the legislature, and of our ablest statesmen in 
 general, has concluded against these insurances 
 on political grounds ; otherwise they would have 
 been permitted, instead of being, as they are, 
 prohibited by law*. 
 
 * The prohibitions of the last war, 33 George II. cap. 27. s. 4, has 
 not, I believe, yet been renewed. Perhaps;, during the pressure of
 
 86 
 
 But I conjure the British underwriter's to re- 
 flect that there is a wide difference between the 
 insurance of an enemy's property, fairly passing 
 on the seas as such, in his own name ; and the in- 
 surance of the same property under a fraudulent 
 neutral disguise. By the former transaction, in- 
 deed, the law is more openly violated ; but in the 
 latter, the law-breaking and clandestine contract, 
 is, in effect, a conspiracy of the underwriter with 
 the enemy and his agents, to cheat our gallant and 
 meritorious fellow-subjects, the naval captors; as 
 well as to frustrate the best hopes of our country, 
 in the present very arduous contest. 
 
 Besides, by what immoral means is the safety 
 of the underwriters in these secret contracts con- 
 sulted ! It will not, it cannot, be denied, that in- 
 stead of the paltry considerations for which they 
 now consent to release the warranty of neu- 
 trality, they would require more than double the 
 
 parliamentary business, which has prevailed ever since the commence- 
 ment of the present war, it has escaped the attention of government. 
 The illegality of insuring hostile property, stands, however, on common 
 law principles, independent of anj positive statute ; as has long since 
 been solemnly decided. The use of that act was not to invalidate 
 the policy, but to impose specilic penalties on the insurer of an 
 enemy's goods; and if it should^ be revived, the indirect method 
 of accomplishing the illegal object by a secret undertaking, will, 
 I trust, be made at least equally penal with the direct and open 
 offence.
 
 87 
 
 open premium for that release, if they did not 
 rely on the effeet of those perjuries and forgeries 
 by which capture or condemnation is avoided. 
 The underwriter, therefore, who enters into the 
 clandestine compact, is an accessary to those 
 crimes. 
 
 But is this all ? Does he not directly contract 
 for, and suborn, as well as abet them ? For 
 whose benefit, and at whose instigation, are 
 those false affidavits and fictitious documents, 
 transmitted from the neutral country, which are 
 laid before the courts of prize in these cases, as 
 evidence of the property, after a decree for fur- 
 ther proofs ? The claimant receives the sum in- 
 sured from the underwriter, and allows the latter 
 to prosecute the claim for his own reimbursement; 
 and for that purpose, the necessary evidence is 
 furnished by the one, and made use of by the 
 other, to support at Doctors Commons the fact of 
 a representation, which at Lloyd's CofTee-House 
 is known to be false. 
 
 It may, indeed, be alleged, that there are often 
 other reasons with the assured, for asking the un- 
 derwriter to wave the question of neutral proper- 
 ty, than a consciousness that the goods belong in 
 fact to an enemy. Courts, it may be said, are li- 
 able to be mistaken on that point ; and the delay 
 attending its investigation, may be injurious.
 
 88 
 
 Pretences like these can never be wanting, to 
 palliate any indirect and disingenuous transaction, 
 that has for its object the concealment of an illegal 
 purpose. To the gamester, the stock-jobber, and 
 the usurer, they are perfectly familiar. Should 
 it, however, be admitted, that such specious rea- 
 sons are sometimes the real motives of the as- 
 sured, and that they are Commonly held forth to 
 the underwriters as such, (which, I admit, is pro- 
 bable enough; for it is not likely that the enemy's 
 agent often needlessly violates decorum, so far as 
 to announce openly the true character of his prin- 
 cipal,) still the defence would be extremely weak. 
 That enemies, very often at least, are the real pro- 
 prietors in these cases, is too natural, and too fre- 
 quently confirmed by actual detection, to be se- 
 riously doubted : besides, our London insurers 
 are not so ill informed, as to be at a loss for a 
 shrewd guess in regard to the national character 
 of the true owners in the policy, from the nature 
 of the transaction itself, and the known connex- 
 ions of the agents. A large part of all the pro- 
 perty engaged in the collusive commerce which 
 I have described, is insured in Great-Britain : 
 and in the insurances upon it, the secret engage- 
 ment has become almost universal. If, then, any 
 considerable part of this property is known to be 
 hostile ; how can our underwriters be excused 
 by the assertion, supposing it true, that much of it
 
 89 
 
 is really neutral. They enter into a clandestine 
 contract, which, though a neutral may have some 
 good reasons for proposing, an enemy, it can- 
 not be denied, is still more likely to proposes 
 and which is peculiarly well adapted to the pro- 
 tection of hostile property ; a use which they well 
 know too is, in fact, often made of it. The de- 
 fence, therefore, is like that of a general receiver 
 of stolen goods, who, while he deals in a way 
 peculiarly fit, by its secrecy and other circum- 
 stances, for the protection of thieves, should al- 
 lege, that honest distressed men, from a fear of 
 disgrace, often bring their watches and plate to 
 his shop, in the same covert and suspicious man- 
 ner. 
 
 This bad and dangerous practice, is not pecu- 
 liar to the underwriters on colonial produce and 
 supplies, but extends to almost every other spe- 
 cies of commerce, that is now fraudulently car- 
 ried on under neutral colours. Every contest in 
 our prize courts, respecting property so insured, 
 becomes an unnatural struggle, between British 
 captors, fairly asserting their rights under the law 
 of war ; and British underwriters, clandestinely 
 opposing those rights under cover of foreign 
 names. Every sentence of condemnation, in such 
 cases, is a blow, not to the hostile proprietor, but 
 to our own fellow-subjects. 
 
 N
 
 90 
 
 If the danger of disloyal correspondence, in 
 order to prevent or defeat a capture ; if the aug- 
 mented means of imposition on the courts of 
 prize ; or if the cheap and effectual protection 
 given to the enemy, be considered, in either 
 view, this bad practice ought to be immediately 
 abolished. 
 
 But there is a still more important and sacred 
 reason for its suppression. If neutral merchants 
 will violate the obligations of truth and justice, in 
 order to profit unduly by the war, the societies 
 to which they belong, will soon feel the poison- 
 ous effects, in the deterioration of private morals; 
 for habits of fraud and perjury, will not terminate 
 in the neutralizing employments that produced 
 them. But with the profit which redounds to them 
 and their employers, let them also monopolize 
 the crimes. Let us not suffer, at once in our bel- 
 ligerent interests, and, in what is far more valu- 
 able, our private morals, by sharing the contami- 
 nation ; let us not be the accomplices, as well as 
 victims of the guilt. 
 
 Since it is not enough, that the engagements in 
 question are void in law; they ought to be prohi- 
 bited, under severe penalties, as well on the bro- 
 ker who negociates, as on the underwriter who 
 subscribes them. 
 
 Returning from this digression, let us re- 
 sume for Li moment our comparative view of
 
 91 
 
 English, and French or Spanish commerce, as to 
 the expense of carriage during war between the 
 West-Indies and Europe. 
 
 There is one remaining head of expense at- 
 tending the importation of colonial produce, un- 
 der which it may possibly be supposed, that the 
 enemy sustains a loss, more than equivalent to 
 his comparative advantages in other respects. I 
 mean the commission or factorage : for it cannot 
 be disputed, that the fraudulent must be compen- 
 sated more liberally, than the honourable ser- 
 vice. 
 
 I cannot pretend with certainty to state the 
 average price of that collusive agency, the busi- 
 ness of which is called " neutralization," either 
 in this or any other branch of trade ; but there 
 is every reason to conclude, that it is by no 
 means equal to those differences in the rate of 
 insurance, which have been shown to be so fa- 
 vourable to the enemy. I am credibly informed, 
 that in some European branches of trade, it is 
 reduced to two, and even to one per cent, on the 
 amount of the invoice ; and there seems no rea- 
 son why the price of conscience should be higher 
 in one transaction of this kind than another, ex- 
 cept in proportion to the profit derived by the 
 purchaser. 
 
 But here it may perhaps be objected, that lam 
 building on an hypothesis, the truth of which has
 
 92 
 
 not hitherto been proved ; namely, that the co- 
 lonial produce, the subject of the commerce in 
 question, though ostensibly neutral property, is 
 carried on the enemy's account. 
 
 Independently of the discoveries frequently 
 made in the prize courts, there are strong pre- 
 sumptive grounds for supposing that this is com- 
 monly the case, not only in the colonial trade, but 
 in every other new branch of commerce, which 
 the neutral merchants have acquired during the 
 war. The general views and interests of the 
 parties to these transactions, must strongly in- 
 cline them to that fraudulent course ; and the 
 facility of concealing it is become so great, that 
 nothing, for the most part, can induce them to 
 ship bona fcie on neutral account, but a principle 
 which, unhappily, experience proves to be ex- 
 tremely rare among them — respect for the obli- 
 gation of truth. 
 
 Besides, where can America, and the other 
 neutral countries, be supposed to have suddenly 
 found a commercial capital, or genuine commer- 
 cial credit, adequate to the vast magnitude of 
 their present investments ? 
 
 By what means, could the new merchants of 
 the United Stales, for instance, be able to pur- 
 chase all the costly exports of the Havannah, and 
 the other Spanish ports in the "West-Indies, 
 which now cross the Atlantic in their names?
 
 Yet what are these, though rich and ample, 
 when compared to the enormous value of that 
 property which is now carried, under the flag of 
 this new power, to and from every region of the 
 globe ? 
 
 Those who are but superficially acquainted 
 with the subject, may perhaps be ready to sup- 
 pose, that the frauds which they hear imputed 
 to neutral merchants at this period, are like those 
 which have always prevailed in every maritime 
 war; but the present case, in its extent and 
 grossness at least, is quite without a precedent. 
 
 Formerly, indeed, neutrals have carried much 
 of the property of our enemies ; and great part 
 of what they carried was always ostensibly their 
 own ; but now they carry the ichole of his ex- 
 ports and imports, and allege the zvhole to be 
 neutral. It rarely, if ever happens, that the pro 
 perty of a single bale of goods, is admitted by the 
 papers to be hostile property. We are at war with 
 all those who, next to ourselves, are the chief 
 commercial nations of the old world ; and yet 
 the ocean does not sustain a single keel, ships 
 of war excepted, in which we can find any 
 merchandize that is allowed to be legitimate 
 prize. 
 
 France, Spain, Holland, Genoa, and the late 
 Austrian Netherlands, and all the colonies and 
 trans-marine dominions of those powers, do not, 
 collectively, at this hour, possess a single mer-
 
 94 
 
 chant ship, or a merchant, engaged on his own 
 account in exterior commerce, or else the neutral 
 flag is now prostituted, to a degree very far beyond 
 all former example. 
 
 Those who dispute the latter conclusion, must 
 ask us to believe, that all the once eminent mer- 
 cantile houses of the great maritime countries 
 now hostile to England, are become mere fac- 
 tors, who buy and sell on commission, for the 
 mighty, though new-born merchants of Den- 
 mark, Russia, and America ; for in all the num- 
 berless ports and territories of our enemies, 
 there is not one man who now openly sustains 
 the character of a foreign independent trader, 
 even by a single adventure. Not a pipe of 
 brandy is cleared outwards, nor a hogshead of 
 sugar entered inwards, in which any subject of 
 those unfortunate realms, has an interest beyond 
 his commission. 
 
 If the extravagance of this general result, did 
 not sufficiently show the falsehood, in a general 
 view, of the items of pretence which compose it, 
 I might further satisfy, and perhaps astonish the 
 reader, by adducing particular examples of the 
 gross fictions, bv which the claims of neutral 
 property are commonly sustained in the prize 
 court. 
 
 Merchants, who, immediately prior to the last 
 war, were scarcely known, even in the obscure 
 sea-port towns at which they resided, have sud-
 
 95 
 
 denly started up as sole owners of great num- 
 bers of ships, and sole proprietors of rich car- 
 goes, which it would have alarmed the wealthiest 
 merchants of Europe, to hazard at once on the 
 chance of a market, even in peaceable times. 
 A man who, at the breaking out of the war, 
 was a petty shoemaker, in a small town of East 
 Friesland, had, at one time, a hundred and fifty 
 vessels navigating as his property, under Prussian 
 colours. 
 
 It has been quite a common case, to find 
 individuals, who confessedly had but recently 
 commenced business as merchants, and whose 
 commercial establishments on shore were so in- 
 significant, that they sometimes had not a single 
 clerk in their employment, the claimants of nu- 
 merous cargoes, each worth many thousand 
 pounds ; and all destined at the same time, with 
 the same species of goods, to the same preca- 
 rious markets *. 
 
 The cargoes of no less than live East-India- 
 men, all composed of tile rich exports of Batavia, 
 together with three of the ships, were cotem- 
 porary purchases, on speculation, of a single 
 house at Providence in Rhode-Island, and were 
 all bound, as asserted, to that American port ; 
 
 * Cases of tlie Bacchus-, the Bedford, the London Packet, the Pi- 
 fjti, &c. &c. claimed Cor houses in Boston and George- Town in Ma- 
 ryland, at the Cockpit, Iai>t war.
 
 96 
 
 where, it is scarcely necessary to add, no de- 
 mand for their cargoes existed *. 
 
 Adventures not less gigantic, were the subjects 
 of voyages from the colonies of Dutch Guiana, 
 to the neutral ports of Europe ; and from the 
 Spanish West-Indies, to North America. Vessels 
 were sent out from the parsimonious northern 
 ports of the latter country, and brought back, in 
 abundance, the dollars and gold ingots, of Vera 
 \ Cruz and La Plata. Single sljips have been 
 
 found returning with bullion on board, to the va- 
 lue of from a hundred, to a hundred and fifty 
 thousand Spanish dollars, besides valuable car- 
 goes of other colonial exports f. 
 
 Yet even these daring adventurers have been 
 eclipsed. One neutral house has boldly con- 
 tracted for all the merchandize of the Dutch 
 East-India Company at Batavia; amounting in 
 value to no less than one million seven hundred 
 thousand pounds sterling J. 
 
 But have not, it may be asked, the means of 
 payment, for all the rich cargoes which have 
 been captured, undergone a judicial investiga- 
 tion r Yes, such slender investigation as the 
 prize court (which of necessity proceeds on the 
 ex parte evidence of the claimants themselves) 
 
 * Case of the Reeinsilyke. 
 
 ^ Case of the Gladiator, the Flora, &.c. at the Cockpit. 
 J Case of the Re;>dsbborgr, 4 Robinson, 121.
 
 97 
 
 has power to institute ; the effect of which has 
 been, to produce a tribe of subsidiary impostures, 
 not less gross than the principal frauds which they 
 were adduced to support. 
 
 Sometimes a single outward shipment, has 
 been made to fructify so exuberently in a hostile 
 market as to produce three return cargoes, far 
 richer in kind than the parent stock ; with two 
 additional ships purchased from the enemy, to 
 assist in carrying home the harvest. In other 
 cases it has been pretended, that bills of ex- 
 change, or letters of credit, remittances which 
 usually travel from Europe to the colonies, and 
 scarcely ever in the reverse of that direction, 
 were carried to the East-Indies, or to a West- 
 India island, and applied there in the purchase 
 of the captured cargoes ; or that the master or 
 supercargo, a mere stranger perhaps in the place, 
 found means to negociate drafts to a large amount 
 on his owners. 
 
 A pretence still more convenient and compre- 
 hensive, has been in pretty general use — that 
 of having an agent in the hostile port, whose 
 ostensible, account current may obviate all diffi- 
 culties, by giving credit for large funds remain- 
 ing in his hands, the imaginary proceeds of for- 
 mer consignments, which he invests in the colo- 
 nial exports. 
 
 o
 
 98 
 
 In other cases, the master or supercargo, hi! 
 order to give colour to the pretended payment, 
 lias really drawn bills of exchange in the colony, 
 payable at the port of destination ; but then 
 there has been a secret undertaking that they 
 shall be given up, on delivery of the cargo to 
 the agent of the hostile proprietor ; and some- 
 times, to guard against breach of faith by the 
 holders of such bills, and possible inconvenience 
 to the drawers, they have been made payable at 
 a certain period after the arrival of the ship and 
 cargo ; so that in the event of capture and con- 
 demnation, they would be of no effect. 
 
 A still grosser device has at other times been 
 employed, and was in very extensive use, by the 
 planters of the Dutch West-Indies resident in 
 Europe, before the conquest of Surinam, and 
 their other colonies in Guiana. Contracts were 
 made in Holland with neutral merchants, for 
 the sale of large quantities of sugar, coffee, and 
 other produce, at a stipulated price, which was 
 supposed to be paid in Europe ; and, thereupon, 
 directions were sent to the attornies or managers 
 of the estate in the colony, to deliver the produce 
 so sold to the order of the neutral purchasers. — 
 Vessels, chartered by the latter, were sent out, 
 chiefly in ballast, with a competent number of 
 these orders on board ; by means of which, the
 
 99 
 
 valuable cargoes of produce received in the co- 
 lony were ostensibly acquired. The same pre- 
 tences were also adopted by some Spanish colo- 
 nists of Cuba. 
 
 A man must be profoundly ignorant of the na- 
 ture of such commodities, and of the colonial trade 
 in general, to suppose that these contracts could 
 •be sincere. Such are the varieties in the quality, 
 and, consequently, in the value of sugar and other 
 West-India produce ; and so greatly unequal are 
 different parcels, the growth even of the same 
 plantation and season, to each other ; that, to fix 
 the price while the particular quality is unknown, 
 would be preposterous ; and would place the 
 buyer quite at the mercy of the seller, or his 
 agents. — Besides, from the quick fluctuations of 
 price in the European markets, such prospective 
 contracts as these, would be downright gaming , 
 unmixed with any portion of sober commercial 
 calculation. — A man might as well bargain for 
 English omnium in Japan. 
 
 Without enumerating any more of these 
 coarse impostures, I would remark, that the re- 
 sort to them, is a striking proof of the difficulty 
 these neutralizes found in making out a credible 
 case ; and that which gave occasion for them 
 in the colonial trade, forms alone, a strong pre- 
 sumption against the general truth of their claims. 
 J mean the known fact, that the cargoes carried
 
 ioo 
 
 fco the hostile colonies, in general, are utterly in- 
 sufficient to pay for the rich returns. In the trade 
 of the sugar islands, especially, if the whole im- 
 ports from Europe and America were taken col- 
 lectively, they would hardly be equal in value to 
 one-tenth part of the exports. 
 
 For what purpose, it may be reasonably de- 
 manded, should the planter sell more of his pro- 
 duce in the colony than is requisite to pay for his 
 supplies ? — It is not there, that his debts are to be 
 paid, or his savings laid by ; but in the mother 
 country ; and it is in that country also, or in 
 s«me part of Europe alone, that his produce can 
 be advantageously sold. If, then, he sells more 
 produce in the colony, than will serve to defray 
 the expenses of his estate, it can only be to avoid 
 the risk of sending it specifically on his own ac- 
 count, to Europe. — But if a fictitious sale will al- 
 most equally avoid that risk, it is obviously a far 
 more advantageous expedient than the other ; for 
 in \\ hat form can he remit the proceeds, that of 
 bills of exchange excepted, without encounter- 
 ing an equal danger on the passage ? yet in tak- 
 ing bills, especially from such persons as usually 
 conduct this trade, he may sustain a risk more 
 formidable than that of capture and discovery ; 
 while he relinquishes to the drawer, the benefit 
 of the European market. 
 '" But," it may be said, " these claims of neu-
 
 101 
 
 " tral property have often been established by 
 " the decrees of the supreme tribunal of prize 
 " — they were therefore believed, by those who 
 " were the most competent judges, to be true." — 
 I admit they have been so established, and even 
 in some of the cases which I have instanced as 
 peculiarly gross ; but not because they were be- 
 lieved — it was only because they were supported 
 by such direct and positive testimony, as judges 
 bound to decide according to the evidence before 
 them, are not at liberty to reject. 
 
 The presumption that great part of the colo- 
 nial produce goes to Europe on account of the 
 enemy, is strongly fortified by the frequency of 
 those collusive double voyages, the nature of 
 which has been fully explained. 
 
 Let it be admitted, that a real neutral specula- 
 tor in West-Indian produce, might wish to buy in 
 the colony, as well as to sell in Europe ; still 
 there seems no adequate reason for his choos- 
 ing to send forward to the latter, at a considera- 
 ble risk in the event of detection, the identical 
 produce which he bought in the former, after it 
 has been actually landed in his own country ; 
 when he might, commute it, by sale or barter, 
 for other produce of the same description, which 
 might be exported with perfect security, and 
 without the expense of perjury or falsehood. 
 
 On the other hand, supposing the property to
 
 102 
 
 remain in the enemy planter, from whom it was 
 ostensibly purchased, the obstinate adherence to 
 these double voyages, and the artifices employed 
 for their protection, are perfectly natural. To 
 exchange his produce in the American market, 
 would be a trust too delicate to be willingly re- 
 posed by the planter in his neutralizing agent ; 
 and besides, the identity of the goods shipped in 
 the West-Indies, with those which shall be ulti- 
 mately delivered to himself or his consignee in 
 Europe, must be essential to his satisfaction and 
 security ; as well as to the obtaining those abate- 
 ments or privileges on the importation into the 
 mother country, to which the produce of its 
 own colonies are entitled. 
 
 After all, let it not be supposed that the impor- 
 tant conclusions to which I reason, depend on 
 the fact, that the trade in question is carried on 
 chiefly, or in some degree, on account of our 
 enemies. Were the contrary conceded, very lit- 
 tle, if any, deduction need, on that score, be 
 made from the sum of the mischiefs here as- 
 cribed to the encroachments of the neutral flag. 
 
 If the hostile colonies are supplied with all 
 necessary imports, and their produce finds its 
 way to market, the enemy is effectually relieved 
 from the chief pressure of the war ; even though 
 both branches of the trade should pass into fo- 
 reign hands, in reality, as well as in form ; cor
 
 103 
 
 is this always, perhaps, the least advantageous 
 course. 
 
 Let it be supposed, that the neutral merchants 
 really buy on their own account, at Martinique 
 and the Havannah, the sugars which they sell at 
 Bourdeaux and at Cadiz. In that case, their in- 
 ducement is found in the hope of a commercial 
 profit, instead of a factor's commission ; and it 
 evidently depends on the average extent of that 
 profit, compared with the ordinary commission 
 on neutralization, whether the enemy is less ad- 
 vantageously assisted in this mode, than the 
 other. 
 
 Let the common commission, for instance, be 
 supposed to be 5 per cent. : then, if sugars 
 bought for 1000 dollars at the Havannah, nett, 
 on an average, 1050 dollars, clear of freight and 
 all other expenses, in the market of Cadiz, it is 
 indifferent between the enemy and the neutral 
 merchant, whether the latter imports on his own 
 account, or as agent for a Spanish subject. The 
 service done to the individual enemy, and to the 
 hostile state, is, in both cases, exactly the same ; 
 and so is the detriment sustained by the adverse 
 belligerent, against whom the commerce of the co* 
 lony was protected. 
 
 Is it, then, likely, that neutrals trading on their 
 own account, would obtain a larger average pro- 
 iit, than the amount of a neutralizing commission?
 
 104 
 
 — Rather, I conceive, the reverse : for it is the 
 natural and speedy effect of competition, in 
 every branch of trade, to reduce the average 
 profits of the adventurers, taken collectively, to 
 the lowest rate at which any competitor can af- 
 ford to prosecute the business ; and even below 
 that level. More especially is this the event, 
 when the gains are very precarious, and very un- 
 equally divided : for the gaining propensity, in- 
 duces men to give for chances in commerce, as 
 well as in the lottery, much more than they are 
 intrinsically worth. — Now, the enemy who ex- 
 ports from the colony, and imports into the mo- 
 ther country, produce of his own growth, paying 
 a neutralizing commission on the carriage, is a 
 competitor with the genuine neutral speculator 
 in the same market, on equal terms, the difference 
 of that commission excepted; and as the planter, 
 in sending home his own produce, looks to no 
 mercantile gain on the voyage, but merely to 
 the remittance of his property, the commission 
 must soon become the measure of the average 
 profit to neutral importers in general ; and the 
 gains of the speculator, will even have a ten- 
 dency to fall below, though they will not perma- 
 nently exceed, that standard. The commission 
 will also feel the depreciating effect of competi- 
 tion; so that this regulator will, itself, progres- 
 sively decline; but its fall will, at the same
 
 105 
 
 time, further depress th$ speculator's profit, and 
 in an equal degree. 
 
 If this reasoning, which seems to stand on the 
 plainest principles of commercial arithmetic, be 
 just, the profits of the genuine neutral merchants 
 in this trade, must at present be very low : for let 
 it be considered, that it has now fc^n prosecuted 
 by every neutral nation, no less than twelve 
 years ; a brief interruption during the late peace 
 excepted ; so that competition has had ample 
 time to work its natural effects. The enemy, 
 probably therefore, is a gainer at present, rather 
 than a loser, when delivered from the necessity 
 of being his own exporter and importer, by a 
 real sale to, and repurchase from, the neutral 
 merchant. 
 
 That this commerce, however conducted, is 
 not a very costly vehicle for the colonial produce 
 of a belligerent inferior at sea, is manifest from 
 a single and highly important fact, to which I 
 would next particularly call the reader's atten- 
 tion. 
 
 The produce of the West-Indies, sells cheaper at 
 present, clear of duties, in the ports of our enemies, 
 than in our own *. 
 
 * This statement also has reference to the month of August last, sines 
 which period, I believe, the late decisions in our prize courts hare oc- 
 casioned a material change. At that time, and for many preceding 
 mouths, it was sreaeiajly a losing game t» export West-India produce 
 
 P
 
 106 
 
 Though the preceding statements and calcula- 
 tions naturally lead to this result; it will, perhaps, 
 be regarded with some astonishment. But the 
 emotions that it ought to excite, are rather those 
 of indignation and alarm. 
 
 We defend our colonies at a vast expense — we 
 maintain, atffc still greater expense, an irresis- 
 tible navy ; we chase the flag of every enemy 
 from every sea ; and at the same moment, the 
 hostile colonies are able, from the superior safety 
 and cheapness of their new-found navigation, 
 to undersell us in the continental markets of Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 Where is the partial compensation now, that 
 our planters used to find, for the heavy burthens 
 and dangers of war ? If the cost of their supplies 
 were enormously enhanced, if war taxes pressed 
 them hard, if freight and insurance were doubled 
 or trebled, if their interior defence became ex- 
 pensive as well as laborious, and if they were 
 sometimes invaded or plundered by a hostile 
 force, still their rivals and enemies in the neigh- 
 bouring islands were in no capacity to mock at, 
 
 from this country to Amsterdam or Flanders, oven when tiie whole duty 
 was drawn back ; for the importer of French and Spanish produce of a like 
 description, could afford to sell on cheaper terms ; yet the latter had paid 
 considerable duties in the colonies it came from, which had not been 
 drawn back.
 
 107 
 
 or profit by, these disasters. On the contrary, 
 the superior pressure of the war upon the hos- 
 tile colonies, insured to our own, the benefit of 
 markets more than commonly advantageous. 
 While the benefit of the drawback gave them at. 
 least equality with their rivals, in the foreign 
 and neutral markets of Europe, in regard to fiscal 
 charges ; in other respects the differences were 
 all in their favour. The foreign sales, therefore, 
 were highly beneficial; and the home-market, re- 
 lieved by a copious exportation from all tempo- 
 rary repletions, gave them in its large and ever 
 advancing prices, some indemnity for the evils of 
 the war. 
 
 By the present unprecedented and artificial 
 state of things, this compensation has been nar- 
 rowed, and is likely to be totally lost. Much of 
 the embarrassment under which our West-India 
 merchants and planters have laboured, and much 
 of that silently progressive ruin in our old 
 colonies, the nature and extent of which are 
 too little known in England, may be traced per- 
 haps to this singular source. By circumstances 
 which it would be too digressive to explain, the 
 main evil has been much retarded in its progress, 
 and is only now beginning to operate with its na- 
 tural force ; but, unless the cause is removed, it 
 will soon be severely felt. 
 
 I. am well informed, that the business of the
 
 108 
 
 sugar refiner, the great customer of the West-In^ 
 dia merchant, has, of late, been very unsuccess- 
 ful. Instead of obtaining a large annual profit as 
 formerly, his accounts for the last season have 
 been wound up with a serious loss. 
 
 A symptom more clearly indicatory than this> 
 of the ill effects which I wish to expose, cannot 
 be required. — From what sources result the chief 
 gains of the sugar refiner? From an advance 
 pending his process, in the prices of the raw> 
 and, of course, of the refined commodity, and 
 1 1ritis chiefly occasioned by an increase in the 
 difference of price between the home and the fo- 
 reign market, when that difference is favourable 
 to exportation : for the foreign in great measure 
 regulates the home demand. When, therefore, 
 the price of sugar in the continental markets is 
 progressively declining, in the proportion it bears 
 to the existing price in this country, which, of 
 course, will naturally happen when the supply 
 from the foreign colonies is progyessively either 
 enlarged or cheapened, the British refiner will 
 find, as he has lately done, a loss instead of a 
 profit on his business. The consequences of such 
 a progress, if continued, are not less obvious than 
 alarming. 
 
 It appears, then, on the whole, that our ene- 
 mies carry on their colonial commerce under
 
 109 
 
 the neutral flag, cheaply as well as safely ; that 
 they are enabled, not only to elude our hos- 
 tilities, but to rival our merchants and planters, 
 in the European markets y and that their compa- 
 rative, as well as positive advantages, are such, 
 as to injure our manufacturers, and threaten our 
 colonies with ruin. 
 
 That the hostile treasuries are fed by the 
 same means with a copious stream of revenue, 
 without any apparent pressure on the subject; 
 a revenue which otherwise would be cut off 
 by the war, or even turned into our own cof- 
 fers, is a most obvious and vexatious conse- 
 quence. Without the charge of defending his 
 Colonies, or their trade, by a single squadron or 
 convoy, the enemy receives nearly all the tribute 
 from them, that they would yield under the most 
 expensive protection. 
 
 Let it not be supposed, that even such produce 
 as is imported bona fide into neutral countries, 
 and sold there without re-shipment, fads to yield 
 its portion of revenue to the hostile state. 
 
 To prevent such a loss, our enemies have had 
 recourse to various expedients ; but chiefly to 
 those, of either charging and receiving duties in 
 the colony, on the exportation of the produce 
 from thence ; or taking bonds from persons resi- 
 dent in the mother country, in respect of every 
 ship clearing out for, or intended to carry produce
 
 110 
 
 from the colonies, with condition either to land 
 such produce in a port of the mother country, or 
 pay the duties there. 
 
 Sometimes, in order to encourage the perform- 
 ance of engagements to import into the mother 
 country, which the proprietor, though an ene- 
 my, might, for greater safety, wish to violate, the 
 bond has been conditioned for payment of double 
 tonnage or duties, in the event of the cargo be- 
 ing landed in any foreign port *. 
 
 But Bonaparte finding, I suppose, that the 
 best way of securing an importation into France, 
 was the actual previous payment of the whole 
 French import duties, appears now to have gene- 
 rally prescribed that course. By custom-house 
 certificates, found on board a Gallo-American 
 East-Indiaman, from the isle of France, lately 
 condemned in the Admiralty, it appeared, that 
 the proprietors had actually paid all the French 
 import duties in advance, in the colony, and 
 were, therefore, to be allowed to import the cargo 
 into Nantz, duty free. Yet this ship, as usual, 
 was ostensibly destined for New- York f . 
 
 Of the Spanish treasure shipped from South 
 America, a great part may be reasonably re- 
 
 * Cases of the Vrow Margaretta, Marcusson ; Speculation, Roe- 
 lofs, &c. at the Cockpit, 1S01. 
 
 f Case of the Commerce, Fajk, master, at the Admiralty, August, 
 1805.
 
 Ill 
 
 garded as nett revenue passing on the kings 
 account ; and from his treasury, it is, no doubt, 
 copiously issued to supply the war chest of 
 Bonaparte. Nor is his Spanish majesty at a loss 
 to convert into specie, and draw over to Europs, 
 those more cumbrous subjects of revenue, which 
 he receives beyond the Atlantic ; or to commute 
 them there, in such a manner as may serve for 
 the support of the colonial government, by the aid 
 of his neutral merchants. To a single commer- 
 cial house, he sold, or pretended to sell, all the to- 
 bacco in the royal warehouses in three of his 
 South American provinces, for payment in dol- 
 lars, or in such goods as could easily and advan- 
 tageously be converted into specie in that coun- 
 try*. 
 
 After attending to these facts, it will not be 
 easy to discover in what way the hostile govern- 
 ments feel the pressure of the war, in regard to 
 their colonial commerce. 
 
 The private merchants, even scarcely seem to 
 sustain any serious loss, except that their ships 
 are unemployed. But transfers, real or ostensi 
 ble, to neutrals, have, for the most part, obviated 
 this inconvenience : and the government itself 
 has, no doubt, been a liberal freighter, or pur- 
 chaser, of such disengaged native bottoms as 
 
 * Case of the Anna Catharina, 4 Robinson, 107.
 
 112 
 
 were fit for the invasion of England ; a service 
 for which our neutral friends have obligingly set 
 them at leisure. The usurper, therefore, might 
 perhaps be as popular among his merchants, as 
 he seems anxious to be, if it were not for those 
 -naval blockades, against which he is incessantly 
 raving. If the British courts of admiralty would 
 in that respect obligingly adopt his new code of 
 maritime law, the commerce of France might 
 cease to labour under any uneasy restraint. 
 
 Hitherto, we have considered the abuse of neu- 
 tral rights, chiefly, as a protection unduly imparted 
 to our enemies, in respect of their colonial inte- 
 rests, their trade, and commercial revenues. 
 
 Were this great frustration of our maritime 
 eiTorts in the war, the only prejudice we sustain, 
 the evil would be sufficiently great. It would 
 still be a wrong highly dangerous to our future 
 safety, and adverse to the best hopes of our al- 
 lies ; for to protect the financial means of Bona- 
 parte and his confederates, is to nourish a mon- 
 ster that threatens desolation, not to England on- 
 ly, but to Europe. 
 
 The mischief, however, by no means termi- 
 nates in sustaining the French exchequer ; it 
 strikes in various directions at the very vitals of 
 our national security j it tends powerfully and di-
 
 113 
 
 rectly to the depression of our maritime power, 
 and to the exaltation of the navy of France. 
 
 Let it be considered, in the first place, that by 
 this licentious use of the neutral flags, the enemy 
 is enabled to employ his whole military marine, 
 in purposes of offensive war. 
 
 He is not obliged to maintain a squadron, or a 
 ship, for the defence of his colonial ports ; nor 
 does he, in fact, station so much as a frigate, in 
 the East or West-Indies, except for the purpose 
 of cruizing against our commerce. The nume- 
 rous and frequent detachments of the convoy 
 service, are also totally saved. 
 
 While a great dispersion of his maritime force, 
 and the consequent risk of its defeat and cap- 
 ture, in detail, are thus avoided, he obtains by its 
 concentration near the seat of empire a most for- 
 midable advantage ; since the British navy has to 
 guard our colonies, and our commerce, in all its 
 branches, and is, consequently, widely dispersed 
 in every quarter of the globe. 
 
 During the last war, such considerations might 
 seem of little moment, because the united ma- 
 rine of France and her confederates, was reduced 
 to so very feeble a state, and so little effort was 
 made for its restoration, that no advantage of this 
 kind could raise it from contempt ; much less 
 render it a subject of serious apprehension. 
 
 But now, the case is widely different. The re- 
 
 Q
 
 114 
 
 establishment of the French navy, and those of 
 Spain and Holland, is a work on which Bona- 
 parte is not only eagerly intent ; but in which 
 he has already made a very alarming progress. 
 Already, the great inferiority of the confederates 
 in point of actual force, has begun to disappear ; 
 and so vast are their means of naval structure and 
 equipment, that except through the precarious 
 diversion of the approaching continental war, we 
 cannot long expect to be superior to their united 
 navies in the number of our ships, though we 
 may hope long to be so, in the skill and bravery 
 of our seamen. 
 
 On our own side, also, I admit, improvement 
 is to be expected ; for our Admiralty is hap- 
 pily placed under the auspices of a most able 
 and active minister, who is indefatigable in his 
 eiTorts for the increase of the navy ; and whose 
 comprehensive knowledge of the whole business 
 of the marine department, in all its ramifications, 
 peculiarly well qualifies him for that momentous 
 work. 
 
 The venerable age of Lord Barham has been 
 supposed to be a drawback on his qualifications 
 for office, by those only who are ignorant of his 
 htill energetic powers, both of body and mind. 
 It may even be truly said, that the lapse of years, 
 during which his knowledge of the civil business 
 of -the Admiralty has been matured by observa-
 
 115 
 
 tion and experience, has made him the fitter for 
 his present most arduous station. He resembles 
 the old, but sound and healthy oak, which time 
 has qualified for the most important uses of our 
 navy, by enlarging its girth and its dimensions, 
 without having at all impaired its strength or 
 elasticity. 
 
 In calculating, therefore, on the effect of the 
 enemy's exertions, I allow for every possible 
 counteraction in our own. I suppose that not 
 one ship in our public dock-yards, or in those of 
 the merchants, which is fit to receive the keel of 
 a man of war, will be left unoccupied by the 
 Admiralty, except from the want of means to 
 employ it. But there are limits to the power of 
 rapidly increasing our navy, of which the public 
 at large is not perhaps fully aware. All the 
 knowledge and activity of Lord Barham cannot 
 immediately replenish our magazines with cer- 
 tain materials necessary in the construction of 
 large ships, of which there is a great and in- 
 creasing scarcity, not only in England, but in 
 every other maritime country; and which nature 
 can but slowly re-produce. 
 
 Bonaparte, from the immense extent of those 
 European regions, which are now either placed 
 under his yoke, or subjected to his irresistible 
 influence, and from the effects of that commerce, 
 falsely called neutral, which we fatally tolerate,
 
 116 
 
 is well supplied with the largest and best timber, 
 and with abundance of all other materials for 
 ship-building ; especially in his northern ports — 
 Witness the grand scale of his preparations at 
 Antwerp ; where he has at this moment on the 
 stocks, eight ships of the line, and many of infe- 
 rior dimensions. In this new port, the destined 
 rival of Brest and Toulon, he is rapidly forming 
 large naval magazines, which the interior navi- 
 gation alone may very copiously supply; and 
 which he purchases in the countries of the North, 
 chiefly with the wine and brandy of France, and 
 with the produce of the hostile colonies, carried 
 in neutral bottoms. I am well informed, that 
 the naval stores which he purchased in the Baltic 
 alone, in the year 1804, amounted in value to 
 eierhtv millions of livrcs. In short, he is, con- 
 formably to the boast already quoted, employing 
 all the resources of his power and his policy, for 
 the augmentation of his marine ; and lias not in- 
 credibly declared, that before the commencement 
 of a new year, he would add thirty linc-of-battle 
 ships to the navy of France. 
 
 It is not easy to suppose, that the utmost exer- 
 tions of our government can enable us to keep pace 
 in the multiplication of ships, with all our united 
 enemies ; especially while they are enabled, by the 
 neutralizing system, to preserve all the men-of- 
 war they progressively acquire : keeping them
 
 117 
 
 safely in port, until deemed numerous enough 
 to enter on offensive operations. Even when that 
 critical period arrives, they will, no doubt, still 
 choose to commit their commerce to the safe keep- 
 ing of their neutral friends ; and not hoist again 
 their mercantile flags, till they have attempted to 
 overpower by concentrated attacks, the scattered 
 navy of England. 
 
 There is, however, another grand requisite of 
 naval war, not less essential than ships ; and that 
 is, a competent body of seamen to man them. 
 
 Here also the increase of our navy beyond or- 
 dinary bounds, is found to be no easy work, and 
 here Bonaparte, happily for us, is not less at a 
 loss ; but that pestilent source of evils, the abuse 
 of neutral rights, in this most momentous point 
 also, largely assists our enemies, and impairs our 
 maritime strength. 
 
 The worst consequence, perhaps, of the in- 
 dependence and growing commerce of Ame- 
 rica, is the seduction of our seamen. We hear 
 continually of clamours in that country, on the 
 score of its sailors being pressed at sea by our 
 frigates. But when, and how, have these sailors 
 become Americans? — By engaging in her mer- 
 chant service during the last and the present war ; 
 and sometimes by obtaining that formal natural- 
 ization, which is gratuitously given, after they 
 have sailed two year? from an American port.
 
 118 
 
 If those who by birth, and by residence and em- 
 ployment, prior to 1793, were confessedly British, 
 ought still to be regarded as his Majesty's subjects, 
 a very considerable part of the navigators of Ame- 
 rican ships, are such at this moment; though, un- 
 fortunately, they are not easily distinguished from 
 genuine American seamen. 
 
 This is a growing, as well as a tremendous evil ; 
 the full consideration of which, would lead me 
 too far from the main object of these sheets. 
 I must confine myself to its immediate connex- 
 ion with the abuse of neutral rights; and con- 
 tent myself with merely hinting in regard to its 
 more comprehensive relations, that it is a subject 
 on which our municipal code is extremely de- 
 fective. 
 
 The unity of language, and the close affinity 
 of manners, betweeen English and American 
 seamen, are the strong inducements with our 
 sailors, for preferring the service of that country, 
 to any other foreign employment ; or, to speak 
 more correctly, these circumstances remove from 
 the American service, in the minds of our sailors, 
 those subjects of aversion which they find in 
 other foreign ships ; and which formerly coun- 
 teracted, effectually, the general motives to de- 
 sert from, or avoid, the naval service of their 
 country. 
 
 What these motives are, I need not explain.
 
 119 
 
 They are strong, and not easy to be removed ; 
 though they might perhaps be palliated, by 
 alterations in our naval system ; but the more 
 difficult it is to remove this dangerous propensity 
 in our seamen ; the more mischievous, obviously, 
 is any new combination, which increases the 
 disposition itself, or facilitates its indulgence. 
 If we cannot remove the general causes of pre- 
 dilection for the American service, or the dif- 
 ficulty of detecting and reclaiming British sea- 
 men when engaged in it ; it is, therefore, the more 
 unwise, to allow the merchants of that country, 
 and other neutrals, to encroach on our maritime 
 rights in time of war ; because we thereby greatly 
 and suddenly, increase their demand for mariners 
 in general ; and enlarge their means, as well as 
 their motives, for seducing the sailors of Great- 
 Britain. 
 
 There is no way of ascertaining, how many 
 seamen were in the employ of the powers at 
 present neutral, at the breaking out of the last 
 war : and how manv at this time navigate under 
 their ilags ; but could these data be obtained, 
 I doubt not, it would appear, that they have 
 been multiplied at least tenfold*; and to the 
 
 * The ships and vessels of East Friesland, ot* 100 tons burthen, 
 and upwards, prior to the present war, were estimated at ]50 ; f;uv 
 they are supposed greatly to exceed '2000.
 
 120 
 
 increase, whatever be its amount, the relaxation 
 of our belligerent rights has, certainly, in a great 
 degree, contributed. 
 
 The legal and ordinary enlargement of neutral 
 commerce, in time of war, would, indeed, have 
 added greatly to the stock of American, as well as 
 of Prussian and Danish mariners; but when the 
 great magnitude and value of the colonial trade 
 are considered, and the many branches of naviga- 
 tion that, directly or indirectly, spring from it; 
 the admission into that commerce may, perhaps, 
 be fairly estimated to have given to those neu- 
 tral nations in general, but pre-eminently to 
 America, two-thirds of the whole actual increase 
 in their shipping. This extensive trade, it may 
 further be observed, has, in the medium length 
 of the voyages, and other known circumstances, 
 peculiar attractions for our seamen ; and, what 
 is still more important, it enables the merchant, 
 by the richness of the cargoes in general, to earn a 
 high neutralizing freight, and consequently to of- 
 fer a tempting rate of wages. 
 
 It is truly vexatious to reflect, that, by this 
 abdication of our belligerent rights, we not only 
 give up the best means of annoying the enemy, 
 but raise up, at the same time, a crowd of dan- 
 gerous rivals for the seduction of our sailors, 
 and put bribes into their hands for the purpose. 
 We not onlv allow the trade of tlio hostile eolo-
 
 1-21 
 
 nies to pass safely, in derision of our impotent 
 warfare, but to be carried on by the mariners of 
 Great-Britain. This illegitimate and noxious na- 
 vigation, therefore, is nourished with the life- 
 blood of our navy. 
 
 Here again our views would be very inade- 
 quate, if they were not extended from our own 
 direct losses, to the correspondent gains of the 
 enemy. 
 
 The hostile navies, are more easily manned, 
 through the same injurious cause which defrauds 
 our own of its seamen. Having no commercial 
 marine, their sailors can find no native employ- 
 ment, privateering excepted, but in the public 
 service ; and it is notorious that very few of them 
 are found on board neutral vessels *. The capa- 
 city, therefore, of Bonaparte and his confederates 
 to man their fleets, must, in some points, be great- 
 er than if they were our equals at sea. 
 
 In former wars, our prisons were generally 
 
 * This is a striking fact, well known to those who are conversant with 
 the business of the prize courts. In the colonial trade especially, the 
 chief subject of these remarks, it is rare to find among the private mari- 
 ners on board a prize who happen to be examined, a single Frenchman 
 or a Spaniard ; though a large proportion of those who are taken onboard 
 American vessels, avow themselves to have been by birth, and by domicile 
 anterior to the war, subjects of Great-Britain. 
 
 R
 
 T22 
 
 crowded with the mariners of France and Spain, 
 taken for the most part on board of their mer- 
 chantmen ; but now, this drawback on their ma- 
 ritime resources, is wholly avoided. Except at 
 the commencement of hostilities, we make not 
 a single prisoner of war in any commercial bot- 
 tom. As to their ships of war, they are so rare- 
 ly to be found out of port, except when making 
 depredations on our commerce, in the absence 
 of any protecting force, that if the present sys- 
 tem continues much longer, the British seamen, 
 prisoners of war in hostile countries, will far out- 
 number their enemies of the same description, in 
 our hands. 
 
 In the East and West-Indies, the effects of these 
 advantages, on the side of the enemy, begin al- 
 ready to be severely felt. Bonaparte has often, 
 and not untruly, boasted, that the injury done to 
 our commerce by the privateers of the Isle of 
 France, of Martinique, and Guadaloupe, has 
 been extremely great. He might also have 
 praised his good allies of Cuba, for equal acti- 
 vity. The little port of Baracoa alone, on the 
 east end of that island, has no less than twelve 
 privateers, who are continually annoying our 
 trade in the Windward Passage *. Curacoa also, 
 
 * See an authentic account of their particular descriptions and force 
 in the London papers of September 17th, 1805.
 
 123 
 
 and the harbour of Santo Domingo, are become 
 most troublesome neighbours to Jamaica. ; 
 
 Can we wonder that the colonial ports should 
 furnish so many cruizers ? It will be a much 
 greater cause of surprise, if they should not soon 
 be multiplied tenfold. Nothing but the small de- 
 gree of encouragement given by the Spanish go- 
 vernment to offensive enterprises during the last 
 war, and the known state of the French colonies 
 at that period, could have saved our merchants 
 and underwriters, from sooner smarting in this 
 way very severely, through our complaisance to 
 the neutral flag. 
 
 Let it be considered, that the Creole seamen 
 domiciled in the hostile -colonies, who are em- 
 ployed in time of peace in what may be called 
 the interior navigation of the West-Indies, and 
 the mariners of the isles of France and Bourbon, 
 who usually pursue their occupation in the orien- 
 tal seas, can now have no civil employment in 
 those regions under their own flags ; for the in- 
 tercourse between the different colonies of the 
 same state, as well as the colonial traffic with 
 neighbouring foreigners, is, like the intercourse 
 with Europe, carried on wholly in neutral ves- 
 sels. 
 
 These seamen, though pretty numerous, espe- 
 cially in the Spanish settlements, very rarely en- 
 gage under a foreign commercial flag ; of which
 
 124 
 
 their religious prejudices as bigotted papists, and 
 their personal insecurity, as being mostly of Afri- 
 can extraction, are probably the principal causes. 
 The entering on board privateers therefore, for 
 the purpose of cruizing against our commerce in 
 the seas which they usually navigate, is with them 
 a necessary, as well as lucrative occupation. 
 
 If it be asked, how are a sufficient number of 
 vessels of war, and the means of equipping 
 them, procured in the colonial ports of the ene- 
 my ? I answer, that many of our merchant ships, 
 which they take, arc easily adapted to the pri- 
 vateering service ; and that though we have not 
 yet allowed neutrals to carry naval stores to the 
 enemy, a sufficient quantity of them are clandes- 
 tinely introduced by those obliging friends, under 
 cover of their general trade. This is another col- 
 lateral ill effect of our fatal indulgence to neutral 
 commerce; for it is easy to conceal under a gene- 
 ral cargo of permitted goods, small parcels of a 
 contraband kind ; and so extensive is the trade of 
 the colonies in proportion to their demand of na- 
 val stores, that contributions from each neutral 
 ship that arrives, small enough to pass as part of 
 her own provision for the voyage, will make up 
 an adequate total. 
 
 But so great has been the audacity of the neu- 
 tral merchants, that they have actually sent ships 
 •constructed solely for the purposes of war, and
 
 125 
 
 pierced for the reception of guns, to the Havan- 
 nah, and other ports of our enemies, for sale : 
 and though it may astonish the reader, American 
 claims for such vessels, when taken on the voy- 
 age, have been pertinaciously prosecuted, not 
 only in our vice-admiralty courts, but afterward 
 in the court of appeals *. The argument was, 
 that, though by our treaty with America, the 
 materials of naval architecture are prohibited 
 goods, yet ships ready built, not being expressly 
 enumerated in the contraband catalogue, might 
 be lawfully sent to our enemies, whether for car- 
 riage or sale. 
 
 Let us next regard this spurious neutral com- 
 merce in another view, as a great discourage- 
 ment to our naval service. 
 
 The wise, liberal; and efficacious policy of this 
 country, has been, to vest the property of mari- 
 time prizes wholly in the captors ; and hence, 
 much of the vigilance, activity, and enterprise, 
 that have so long characterized the British navy. 
 
 Let us give full credit to our gallant officers, 
 for that disinterested patriotism, and that love of 
 glory, which ought to be the main springs of mi- 
 litary character, and which they certainly pos- 
 sess in a most eminent degree. But it would be 
 
 * Case of the Brutus, Rutherford, master, at the Cockpit, July, 
 :S04.
 
 126 
 
 romantic and absurd, to suppose that they do not 
 feel the value of that additional encouragement, 
 which his Majesty and the legislature hold out to 
 them, in giving them the benefit of the captures 
 they make. What else is to enable the veteran 
 naval officer, to enjoy in the evening of his life, 
 the comforts of an easy income ; the father to 
 provide for his children ; or the husband for an 
 affectionate wife, who, from the risks he runs in 
 the service of his country, is peculiarly likely to 
 survive him ? By what other means, can a victo- 
 rious admiral, when raised as a reward of his il- 
 lustrious actions, to civil and hereditary honours, 
 hope to support his well earned rank, and provide 
 for an ennobled posterity r The pension he may ob- 
 tain will be temporary, and scarcely adequate even 
 to his own support, in his new and elevated sta- 
 tion. It is from the enemies of his country, 
 therefore, that he hopes to wrest the means of 
 comfortably sustaining those honours, which he 
 has gained at their expense. 
 
 As to the common seamen and mariners, the 
 natural motives of dislike to the naval service, 
 are in their breasts far more effectually combated 
 by the hope of prize money, than by all the 
 other inducements that are, or can be proposed 
 to them. The nautical character is peculiarly 
 of a kind to be influenced by such dazzling, 
 but precarious prospect.;. The\ reason, however,
 
 127 
 
 and calculate on the chances and the value of 
 success ; witness the proverbial remark, that a 
 Spanish war is the best mean of manning our 
 navy. 
 
 Never, surely, was the encouragement of our 
 naval service more important than at the present 
 period ; and never were the rewards of that ser- 
 vice more meritoriously or gloriously earned. — 
 Yet what are now the rational hopes of our sea- 
 men, in regard to the benefit of prizes ? On 
 whatever station they may be placed, and what- 
 ever sea they may be crossing, they look out in 
 vain for any subject of safe and uncontested cap- 
 ture. 
 
 Are they sent to the East or AVest-Indies ? 
 These, though sickly, used to be lucrative sta- 
 tions ; especially in a war with Spain : but now 
 the rich exports of the hostile colonies present to 
 them only the cup of Tantalus. Thev see the 
 same valuable cargoes passing continually under 
 their sterns, which used formerly to make the for- 
 tunes of the captors ; but the ensigns of neu- 
 trality now wave over them all, and prohibit a 
 seizure. 
 
 Do they, in concert with the land forces, at- 
 tack and conquer a hostile island ? The reward of 
 their successful valour is still wrested from them 
 in the same vexatious way. They find none but
 
 12S 
 
 neutral flags in the harbour, and none but pro- 
 perty alleged to be neutral afloat*. 
 
 In short, except a small privateer or two, of 
 little more value than may suffice to pay the 
 charges of condemnation and sale, the richest 
 seas of the globe, though bordered and thickly 
 studded with the most flourishing colonies of our 
 enemies, have no safe booty to yield to the sea- 
 men of the British navy. It is painful to reflect, 
 that these brave men lose the ancient fruits of 
 distant service, while enduring more than its or- 
 dinary hardships. In the West-Indies, particu- 
 larly, they suffer far more by the ravages of dis- 
 ease, than when the Spanish galleons, and the 
 convoys from the French Antilles, consoled them 
 and rallied their spirits. Then too, victory, either 
 in possession or prospect, often enlivened that 
 languid service, and reanimated the sickly crews ; 
 but now, they meet no enemy worthy of their 
 valour. Their only, but most disheartening foes, 
 are the fever and the neutral flag. 
 
 If we look nearer home, the reverse, in the 
 situation of our seamen, is not less singular or 
 discouraging. The Mediterranean, the Bay of 
 
 * The merchantmen taken by Lord St. Vincent and Sir Charles 
 Grey, at Martinique and Guadaloupe, were all of this description, 
 and, with their cargoes, were ultimately restored.
 
 129 
 
 Biscay, the Channel, the German Ocean, are 
 covered with the exports of Spain, Holland, and 
 France, and their colonies, and with shipping 
 bound to their ports ; but where are the prizes of 
 war ? Our cruizers search for them in vain, 
 even on the hostile coasts ; — for even there, ves- 
 sels, impudently called neutral, conduct, for the 
 most part, that domestic intercourse between dif- 
 ferent parts of the same hostile kingdom, which 
 is called the coasting trade. 
 
 The examination of our disguised enemies at sea 
 is become every where, in general, a fruitless task ; 
 since they are grown far too expert to be detected 
 by such a scrutiny as can be made by a visiting of- 
 ficer on shipboard. Yet, if they are sent into port, 
 it is at the captors' peril. Should, however, a com- 
 manding officer, relying on the notoriety of some 
 fraudulent practice, or on private information, 
 venture to take that course, he and his ship- 
 mates well know the difficulties they will have 
 to encounter in obtaining a condemnation ; and 
 that after a tedious contest in the original and 
 appellate jurisdiction, they are likely at last to sit 
 down with the loss of their expenses and costs. 
 
 The consequence naturally is, that but a very 
 few of those pseudo neutrais, which are met with 
 and examined at sea, are brought in for judicial 
 inquiry ; and that a still smaller proportion of 
 them, are prosecuted as prize; though the law
 
 130 
 
 officers of the crown in the Admiralty, in a great 
 majority of the cases they examine, have scarcely 
 a doubt that the property is hostile. They knovr 
 by experience the fraudulent nature of the pa- 
 pers ; but they know also the artful and elabo- 
 rate perjury by which those papers will be sup- 
 ported, and which, however unsatisfactory out of 
 court, it will be impossible judicially to resist. — • 
 Even when discoveries are made, such as will 
 clearly justify a prosecution, the practice of let- 
 ting in explanatory affidavits on the part of 
 claimants, for the most part secures an ultimate 
 acquittal, and frustrates the hopes of the captors. 
 At the best, as every bottom, and every bale of 
 goods, is now infallibly claimed by the neutraliz- 
 ing agents, and every claim, however clear the 
 detection of its falsehood may be, is pertina- 
 ciously prosecuted, the rare event of a fmal con- 
 demnation can only be obtained through the me- 
 dium of a long contest at law — an evil peculiar- 
 ly unpleasant to the sanguine mind of a sailor. 
 It may be safely affirmed, that one prize taken, 
 as in former wars, under the colours of an ene- 
 my, and therefore promptly condemned and dis- 
 tributed without litigation, would do more to- 
 wards the encouragement of our navy, than 
 three prizes of equal value, tardily, and with 
 difficulty secured, as at present, by the detection 
 of neutral impostures.
 
 131 
 
 Almost the only class of captures, on which 
 our seamen can now with any safety rely, are 
 those which are founded on the breach of a block- 
 ade. Even those, however, are rarely adjudged 
 without an obstinate litigation in the Admiralty, 
 if not also in the superior court. But the ordina- 
 ry value of such prizes is small, and, on the 
 whole, they are so far from making any amend?: 
 to our navy at large for the loss of its legitimate 
 prey Jin the colonial trade, that they are a very in- 
 adequate recompense to the squadrons employed 
 in the blockades, for the extraordinary severity 
 of that service. Here also, a war, barren of gain, 
 is peculiarly productive of hardships, and priva- 
 tions to our gallant defenders. 
 
 These discouragements have been very pa- 
 tiently borne : our loyal and generous tars well 
 know the difficulties of their country, and are 
 content to defend it under every disadvantage 
 that the exigencies of the times may impose on 
 them. But if the present commerce with the hos- 
 tile colonies be plainly such as we have a right to 
 interdict, and if the great national considerations 
 before suggested, concur in calling for its prohi- 
 bition, the interests of our gallant officers and 
 seamen may most reasonably fortify the call. — 
 They ought not, without a clear obligation of 
 national duty, or a plain and strong preponde- 
 rance of public good, to bo -hut out from their
 
 132 
 
 ancient advantages, to be jostled by every neu- 
 tral in the chase of their lawful game, and to 
 sit down in poverty at the next peace, after sus- 
 taining, during two long wars, the dominion of 
 the sea against three of the wealthiest of commer- 
 cial nations. 
 
 Far different is the case with the navy of our 
 enemies. 
 
 The field of capture to them is entirely open, 
 and as fertile as British commerce can make it. 
 Whatever enterprise or courage they display, 
 has the promise of a brilliant reward ; and even 
 when flying from the name of Nelson with near- 
 ly double his force, they could stumble on and 
 seize a rich West-India convoy in their way. — 
 Unless their cowardly haste really led them to 
 destroy the booty, they may boast, perhaps, of 
 commercial spoils more valuable than the hero, 
 who intrepidly pursued them, has met with in 
 both his wars. 
 
 If France persists in her new system, if she 
 does not again quite abandon the sea to us, this 
 strange and most unnatural contrast will have 
 serious effects. Our navy will still be loyal and 
 active, but the difficulty of adding to its force 
 will be formidably increased ; while the enemy, 
 when he begins in earnest to assail our com- 
 merce, will be powerfully assisted in manning 
 his ships, by the prospect of lucrative captures.
 
 133 
 
 The sea abounds with adventurers, who have no 
 settled national character, and these men, in ge- 
 neral, will naturally flock to his standard. 
 
 Already the injurious influence of this cause in 
 one species of maritime war, is very visible. 
 
 From the days of Elizabeth to the present 
 time, much has always been done to the annoy- 
 ance of our commercial enemies by the enter- 
 prise of private subjects. Our own commerce, 
 at the same time, has derived no inconsiderable, 
 though an accidental protection from the same 
 source; since the hostile cruizers have been kept 
 in check, or taken, and our merchantmen, when 
 captured, often rescued from the enemy by our 
 private ships of war. 
 
 Bat the unparalleled licence of the neutral flag 
 has so discouraged privateering, that, the prac- 
 tice of it is nearly extinguished. It may be safe- 
 ly aflirmed, that in any war with Spain, prior to 
 the last, one of our vice-admiralty courts alone, 
 could have produced a longer list of commis- 
 sions, taken out, not for armed merchantmen, 
 but for efficient privateers, than all those judica- 
 tures and the High Court of Admiralty together 
 can now collectively furnish. The decline of 
 this cheap and useful, though inferior, spicks of 
 marine, is so natural an effect of the great sur- 
 render which has been made of our belligerent 
 rights, that the only ground of surprise is, to
 
 134 
 
 find a single cruizcr still in commission. Few 
 though they now are, and very inconsiderable in 
 force, their owners can only be influenced by that. 
 excessive spirit of adventure, which will sometimes 
 prompt men to play the most disadvantageous and 
 ruinous game. 
 
 The enemy, on the other hand, abounds, as 
 has been already noticed, in this irregular species 
 of force. 
 
 In no former war, perhaps, were so many pri- 
 vateers fitted out from the colonies of France 
 and Spain as now; and their number is daily in- 
 creasing; for, not only the mariners of those co- 
 lonies, but all the freebooters in their neighbour- 
 hood, are easily induced to man them. They 
 are, in general, very small ; but the fitter on that 
 account, in the West-India seas, and in the nar- 
 row channels of the Antilles, to escape from the 
 pursuit of our frigates ; nor are they the less able 
 to seize on our merchantmen, who, having now 
 nothing better than an escape, to expect from the 
 expense of carrying guns, and a letter of marque, 
 are generally quite defenceless. The navigation 
 ofthose seas was, perhaps, never so dangerous to 
 British merchantmen sailing without convoy, as 
 at present ; and even our packets, are sometimes 
 taken by French privateers on their passage from 
 island to island. 
 
 The catalogue of evils produced by the same
 
 135 
 
 mischievous cause, might be still farther en- 
 larged. 
 
 I might show in it a powerful inducement to 
 that selfish neutrality, by which one, at least, of 
 the continental states, has enhanced the common 
 danger of Europe. The vain 'glory and the po- 
 pularity attendant on a vast, though visionary, 
 enlargement of commerce, may naturally have 
 charms for a monarch not ambitious of more so- 
 lid renown. 
 
 I might also notice the great discouragement 
 given to various important branches of our own 
 exterior commerce ; and, above all, might insist 
 on the permanent detriment likely to be sus- 
 tained by our commercial marine. The forced 
 artificial growth of neutral shipping, both sup- 
 posititious and real, will, no doubt, shrink back 
 again in great measure, at a peace, but will not 
 be entirely lost. 
 
 In America, especially, the vast excrescence i» 
 daily absorbed into, and enlarges the natural bo- 
 dy, which, in various quarters, is peculiarly likely 
 to displace, by its extended dimensions, the mari- 
 time interests of England. 
 
 Where is the political providence, which dic- 
 tated that wise measure, the Register Act vi 
 Lord Liverpool : lie justly called the naviga- 
 tion act, " a noble strain of commercial policy,
 
 136 
 
 " and one which alone had fortunately out- 
 " weighed all our national follies and extrava- 
 " gancies *." Though no indiscriminate ad- 
 mirer of his lordship's commercial principles, I 
 do him the justice to say, that the act known by 
 his name, was an essential and well-timed sup- 
 port to the great law he justly celebrates ; and 
 the best preventive that human ingenuity could 
 have devised of that decay, with which our 
 navigation was threatened by the independency 
 of America. 
 
 But vain was this and every other effort to 
 guard our maritime interests by law, if, by a sur- 
 render of our belligerent rights, the carrying 
 trade of the globe is to be thrown into the hands 
 of our rivals; and a hot-bed made for the na- 
 vigation of America, at the cost of the British 
 navy. 
 
 In the contemplation, however, of those nearer 
 and more fatal consequences, the utter frustra- 
 tion of our hostilities against the commerce and 
 revenue of France, and the danger of losing our 
 superiority at sea, during this momentous contest, 
 all minor and distant evils lose their terrors. I 
 will, therefore, search no further into the extent 
 of this baneful and prolific mischief. 
 
 * Discourse on the Conduct of the Government of Great-Britain, ii 
 respect to Neutral Nations.
 
 f 
 
 137 
 
 2. Of the Remedy for these Evils, and the Right of 
 applying it. 
 
 For that grand evil, which it is my main object 
 to consider, and which is one great source of all 
 the rest, the remedy is sufficiently obvious. 
 
 If neutrals have no right, but through our own 
 gratuitous concession, to carry on the colonial 
 trade of our enemies, we may, after a reasonable 
 notice, withdraw that ruinous indulgence; and, 
 meantime, hold those who claim the benefit of it, 
 to a strict compliance with its terms. If, after 
 the revocation of the licence, the commerce shall 
 be still continued, we may justifiably punish the 
 violators of our belligerent rights, by the seizure 
 and confiscation of such ships as shall be found 
 engaged in the offence, together with their car- 
 goes. 
 
 That this is an allowable course, will not be 
 disputed, by those who admit the trade to be 
 illegal. It is the present mode of proceeding 
 against such neutrals as are detected in voyages 
 still held to be prohibited ; and has, in their case, 
 I believe, ceased to occasion complaint, by the 
 states to which they belong. 
 
 This remedy also, cannot fail to be effectual. 
 There will be no room for fictitious pretences. 
 
 T
 
 138 
 
 when the immediate voyage itself, in respect to 
 the place of departure, or destination, is a suffi- 
 cient cause of forfeiture ; for the illegal fact must 
 be known to every man on board, must appear 
 from the papers, unless all the public, as well as 
 private instruments are fictitious, and besides, 
 would, for the most part, be discoverable, not 
 only from the place of capture, and the course the 
 ship is steering, but from the nature of the cargo 
 on board. 
 
 The use, therefore, of neutral bottoms, in the 
 colonial trade, would soon be found by our ene- 
 mies, to yield them no protection. They would 
 hoist again their own commercial colours ; and 
 either restore to us all the fair fruits of an un- 
 resisted naval superiority, or, by sending out 
 convoys for the protection of their trade, open 
 to us again that ancient field of offensive war, 
 in which we are sure to be victorious. Our 
 seamen would be enriched, our imports w r ould 
 be very largely increased, and every western 
 breeze would waft into the channel, not a neu- 
 tral sail or two, to furnish diplomatic squabbles, 
 and litigation in the admiralty, but numerous 
 and valuable prizes, and sometimes entire fleets 
 of merchantmen, with their convoys, taken from 
 open enemies, and under hostile colours. The 
 captive flags of France, Holland, and Spain, 
 would again be incessantly seen at Plymouth
 
 139 
 
 and Spithead, drooping below the British en- 
 signs ; and the spectacle would recruit for 
 our navy, far better than the most liberal boun- 
 ties. 
 
 Then too, the enemy would be often obliged to 
 hazard his squadrons, and fleets, for the relief of 
 his colonies, as was usual in former wars ; and 
 the known partiality of Bonaparte to these pos- 
 sessions, especially to the Windward Antilles, 
 would perhaps induce him to incur risks for their 
 protection, greater than those which their value 
 in a national view, might warrant. 
 
 Here dwell the native and nearest connexions 
 of his august consort \ and at Martinique, her 
 imperial highness the empress mother, ci-devant 
 Madame Lapagerie, has a court, and all the other 
 splendid appendages of royalty, to the great local 
 exaltation of that illustrious house. 
 
 At Guadaloupe too, it is said, the emperor 
 owns, in right of his consort, a flourishing planta- 
 tion, the only dowry she has brought to the throne 
 of the Bourbons ; except a gang of negroes, im- 
 proved in number, no doubt, since the restitu- 
 tion of the slave trade. Their fate has been 
 directly the reverse of that of the Roman slaves, 
 who were always enfranchised on the elevation of 
 their lord to the purple ; but though thev do not 
 
 " Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale,"
 
 140 
 
 they are cherished, with the rest of the patrimony 
 in the Antilles, perhaps, with the providence of 
 the visier Alibeg, when he preserved his shep- 
 herd's pipe and crook ; and may they be an 
 equal consolation on a descent from imperial 
 fortunes ! For my part, I see not why Bona- 
 parte should not be as happy on his wife's estate 
 at Guadaloupe, as Dionysius* in his school at. 
 
 I would ask the reader's pardon for detaining 
 him with such trifles, if it were not for the 
 secret connexion they may have with the af- 
 fairs of nations. I offer it as a serious opinion, 
 that the court, the revenues, and feelings of the 
 Lapageries, give to Martinique and Guada- 
 loupe, at present, much adventitious importance ; 
 and I will even hazard a conjecture, that they 
 had some share in producing the only great ma- 
 ritime enterprise of the war, the strange expedi- 
 tion to the Windward Islands. Martinique was 
 strongly reinforced, the Diamond Rock was 
 retaken, troops and arms were landed at Guada- 
 loupe, and the combined fleets returned. Such 
 were the effects of an enterprise, in which so 
 much was hazarded; and Europe had been at a 
 loss to discover unaccomplished objects, less 
 disproportionate to the means employed. Per- 
 haps, if we knew the force of local predilections 
 in the breast of the empress, and the influence 
 
 / • 
 
 '/— /• , , / 
 
 /■/ , / • . 3 A '/"* ' &~ .,
 
 141 
 
 of this Juno and her friends in the councils of the 
 French Olympus, the wanderings of the Toulon, 
 like those of the Trojan, fleet, would, if not quite 
 explained, be rendered less mysterious. 
 
 At least, however, the real importance of these, 
 and the other hostile colonies, would compel the 
 enemy to expose his marine frequently in their 
 defence, when the rampart of neutral navigation 
 no longer protected them from urgent distress 
 and ruin. We should therefore, by the measure 
 I have proposed, not only remedy most of the 
 great and complicated evils which have been 
 noticed, but restore to our navy the chance of 
 frequenth 7 finding a hostile fleet to combat, and 
 to conquer. 
 
 In a word, by restoring the colonial trade of 
 our enemies to its proper shape, and its native 
 channels, we should recover very much, though 
 by no means all, of those natural advantages in 
 the war, which a belligerent, so decidedly supe- 
 rior at sea, ought justly to enjoy; but which 
 are at present most strangely reversed. 
 
 ~~~ X 
 
 But is this a case in which we have a right io 
 any remedy at all? In other words, is not llie 
 eiiGrairinGr in the colonial trade of our enemies 
 lawful to neutral merchants, independently of the 
 permission given by the royal instructions ; and
 
 142 
 
 arc not the evils which have been shown to arise 
 from the practice, such as we are bound to sub- 
 mit to, as flowing from the exercise of a right 
 which we cannot justly restrain ? In short, 
 is not this mischief, in the language of lawyers, 
 " damnum absque injuria ?" 
 
 This, if attended with doubt, would be in- 
 deed a most important question. If it cannot be 
 satisfactorily answered on the part of our country, 
 there should be an end to every thought of re- 
 sistance, if not also to complaint. In that case, 
 let the noble conduct of the Athenian people, on 
 a well known occasion, be a pattern for our own. 
 Nothing can be more advantageous for us, than 
 the suppression of this commerce ; but if, like 
 the advice censured by Aristides, it requires a 
 breach of justice, let us inflexibly abstain. 
 
 Would to God, (for that sacred name may be 
 allowably invoked in behalf of the virtue he loves,) 
 would to God, I say, that nations always prized 
 the obligations of moral duty, far beyond every 
 specious advantage, however great, that opposed 
 them; however seemingly essential even to the 
 care of self-preservation. 'Hie sacrifice, though 
 noble in design, would in its effect, not be costly; 
 for never in the affairs of nations, was solid secu- 
 rity, or true prosperity, purchased at the cost of 
 virtuous principle. The page of history, if care- 
 fully read for the purpose, would establish this
 
 143 
 
 important truth, and teach us to deride those 
 shallow and unprincipled statesmen, who dream 
 to the contrary ; though, like Caiaphas, a great 
 master of their school, they are vain of their per- 
 nicious counsels, and say disdainfully to others, 
 " Ye know nothing at all." 
 
 But in this case, moral right and visible expe- 
 diency, will be found entirely to harmonise. 
 
 The neutral powers, it should first be observed, 
 have all assented to the rule of the war 1?->G, in 
 point of principle, by submitting to its partial ap- 
 plication. 
 
 Their ships, when taken in a direct voyage 
 to or from the hostile countries and their colo- 
 nies, or in a trade between the latter and any 
 other neutral country but their own, have been 
 always condemned by our prize courts, both in 
 the last and the present war : and the practice, 
 during many years, has ceased to occasion com- 
 plaint. Yet these restrictions can be warranted 
 by no other principle, than that on which they 
 were expressly founded, " the unlawfulness of 
 trading with the colonies of a belligerent in 
 time of war, in a way not permitted in time of 
 peace." 
 
 On what other principle than this, could Great- 
 Britain be allowed to say to a Dane or an Ame- 
 rican, the owner of produce bought in a hos- 
 tile colony, and passing on the high seas under
 
 144 
 
 his own flag, in the one case, " You shall not 
 " carry it to America ;" in the other, " You shall 
 " not carry it to Europe r" The right can plain- 
 ly stand on no other foundation than this, that 
 Great-Britain might, lawfully have prohibited the 
 taking the cargo on board at the place of ship- 
 ment, on any destination whatever ; and, conse- 
 quently, in waving the general prohibition, she 
 had a right to prescribe to what places it should 
 be carried. 
 
 If I should dictate to a neighbour, that in 
 crossing a certain field which lay between our 
 respective tenements, he and his servants should 
 confine themselves to a certain path which I 
 had marked out for the purpose, and if he 
 should for years comply with the restriction, or 
 submit to be treated as a trespasser whenever he- 
 deviated from it ; I might, consistently enough, 
 if I found the passage a nuisance, shut it up alto- 
 gether: but it would be grossly inconsistent in 
 him, thereupon to deny my right to the field, and 
 pretend that it was common land. 
 
 Should it, however, be thought that the tacit 
 admission of the principle, ought not to preclude 
 the neutral powers from disputing, though in- 
 consistently in point of theory, a practical ap- 
 plication of it, more extensive than that in which 
 they have so long acquiesced, it must at least 
 be admitted, that in reverting to the rule of the
 
 145 
 
 war 1756, Great-Britain would have to assert no 
 new claim of right ; and would be only bound to 
 assign a fair reason for withdrawing a voluntary 
 modification of its use. 
 
 Now, in the first place, we may truly allege as 
 a reason for withdrawing the indulgence, that it 
 has been very grossly abused : and in the next 
 place, what is enough to create a right, and much 
 more to defend the strict use of a right already ex- 
 isting, that self-preservation demands from us the 
 revocation of the licence we gave. 
 
 It would be a most extraordinary and unpre- 
 cedented situation for two friendly powers to stand 
 in, if the one had a right to do any thing which 
 is destructive to the other. Yet, since the trade 
 in question has been shown to be ruinous to our 
 hopes in the war, and may eventually give a 
 superiority at sea, to an enemy already enormous- 
 ly superior to us in land forces, and bent on our 
 destruction, either the neutral powers and Great- 
 Britain stand in that strange predicament in rela- 
 tion to each other, or we have a right to restrain 
 this trade. If we have no such right, then 
 those states with whom we are in perfect friend- 
 ship, have a right to persevere in conduct, which 
 may, in its natural consequences, make England 
 a province of France. 
 
 If such be the offices of peace and amity, how 
 u
 
 146 
 
 diiFer they from those of war ? The harsh rights 
 of war, may, indeed be exercised in a different 
 manner ; but their extreme extent, is to inflict on 
 an enemy all the mischiefs that may be necessary 
 to his subjugation ; and I do not see how these 
 powers, if confederates of France, could contri- 
 bute more effectual means to that end, than those 
 they at present employ. 
 
 Waving then, for a moment, the objections that 
 arise to this commerce, in respect of its origin 
 and objects, and supposing both to be unexcep- 
 tionably lawful ; still, if its further prosecution 
 be inconsistent with our safety, the obligations 
 of peace and amity, call on the neutral powers to 
 abstain from it. When conflicting rights arise 
 between nations, one party must give way, or 
 war must be the issue ; a right, therefore, which 
 is essential to the existence of the possessor, 
 ought to prevail over one which is not of such 
 vital importance. Now, the neutral powers can 
 subsist without this newly-acquired commerce ; 
 hut Great-Britain cannot long exist as a nation, 
 if bereft oilier ancient means of offensive maritime 
 war. 
 
 That we are engaged in a contest, an adverse 
 issue of which may be fatal to our national safety 
 and independence, will hardly be denied ; if 
 then a necessary mean of preventing such an
 
 147 
 
 issue be the cutting off of the colonial resources 
 of our enemies, to dispute our right of doing so 
 is, in effect, to dispute the right of self-defence. 
 
 It is by no means necessary, however, to resort 
 to this primary law of nature and nations ; for 
 in truth there are, in the case before us, no con- 
 flicting rights. Should we even consent to wave 
 the ground of precedent and acquiescence, and 
 examine in the fullest manner the original me- 
 rits of this question, there will be found clear 
 belligerent right, on the one side, and nothing 
 but palpable encroachment on the other. 
 
 The true principles on which the rule of the 
 war 1756 was founded, have been already stated 
 and enforced, in a manner which it would be easy 
 to amplify, but difficult to improve*. 
 
 I will not hazard such an attempt ; but rather 
 content myself with considering briefly, the most 
 specious objections that have been offered on the 
 other side. 
 
 To the vague general invectives of the French 
 government on this subject, no serious reply can 
 be due. Bonaparte declaims on the maritime 
 despotism of England, with the same good grace, 
 with which he imputed assassinating principles 
 to the Due D'Enghein, perfidy to Toussaint, and 
 ambition to the House of Austria. It is his pe~ 
 
 * See supra, p 13 to 16,
 
 148 
 
 culiar style, in all cases, not merely to defame his 
 enemies, but to impute to them the very crimes, 
 which he is himself, at the same moment, per- 
 petrating ; and of which they are the intended 
 victims. He is quite in character, therefore, 
 when he accuses us of trampling on the mari- 
 time rights of other nations, while he, by the aid 
 of those very nations, is subverting our own. 
 
 He calls us the " tyrants of the sea;" but 
 if the throne is ours, he has filched away the 
 sceptre ; and our naval diadem, like his own 
 iron crown of Lombardy, is, in a commercial 
 view, cumbersome and worthless. This empire 
 is not like his own ; for the imperial family are 
 less favoured in it than their enemies. We 
 traverse the ocean at, a greater charge, even for 
 security on the passage, than those who have no 
 share in the domain. 
 
 The usurper's favourite topic, of late, has been 
 the liberty of navigation : he would be thought 
 the champion of the common rights of all mari- 
 time states. What! has he forgot, or does he 
 expect Europe or America to forget, the recent 
 conduct of France r Nothing, it is obvious, but 
 his own crafty policy, prevents his recurring, at 
 this moment, to the full extent of that extrava- 
 gant pretension on which the neutral powers 
 were so shamefully plundered during the last 
 war; and for a release of which his minister,
 
 149 
 
 M. Talleyrand, demanded " beaucoup de V argent" 
 of America — I mean the monstrous pretension 
 of a right to confiscate every neutral ship and 
 cargo, in which one bale of English merchandize 
 was found. 
 
 Yes ! he will clamour for the freedom of the 
 seas, as he did for the freedom of France, till 
 his neutralizing friends shall have placed him in 
 a condition to destroy it. But should his marine 
 be ever restored by their means, they will feel, 
 as Frenchmen have done, the heavy yoke of a 
 jealous new-erected despotism, instead of those 
 mild and ancient laws, which they were foolishly 
 persuaded to reject. 
 
 The only liberty which this impostor will for 
 a moment patronise, either at sea or on shore, 
 is that liberty which consists solely in the ab- 
 sence of order, and in the power of invading with 
 impunity the long-established rights of others. 
 It is a jacobin liberty only which he would give 
 to navigation, till his own iron bonds for it are 
 forged. 
 
 I decline also engaging with those objectors, 
 who, without copying the invectives of Bona- 
 parte, dispute, like him, our right to suppress 
 the commerce in question, on principles that 
 impeach the practice of maritime capture at 
 large*. 
 
 * If the reader wishes to b« informed of the full extent of these
 
 150 
 
 Those who have sublimated their imagination* 
 so far, as really to think that war ought, in justiee 
 and mercy, to be banished from the boisterous 
 ocean, that it may prey the better and the longer 
 on the social cities or quiet plains ; are not likely 
 to descend with me into the regions of sober in- 
 vestigation. 
 
 To those idolaters of the neutral flag also Who 
 hold a yard of bunting on the poop of a mer- 
 chantman, more sacred than the veil of a vestal, 
 I have nothing to offer. If this inviolable em- 
 blem, ought absolutely to arrest the arms of con- 
 tending nations, and preserve, in all cases, the 
 contents of its sanctuary from capture ; it may 
 with equal reason, I admit, receive under its safe- 
 guard the colonial commerce, as the general pro- 
 perty, of a belligerent. 
 
 But there are some champions of neutral rights, 
 who, without openly contending for these extra- 
 vagant doctrines, maintain stoutly that neutral 
 merchants have a right to trade with the power* 
 at war wherever, and in whatsoever commodi- 
 ties, they please. If contraband goods, and 
 blockaded places be graciously excepted, this is 
 the utmost extent of their abstinence. All other 
 
 revolutionary doctrines, he may rind them compendiously stated, and 
 ably and learnedly refuted, in Mr. Ward's Treatise on the Right.- and 
 Duties of Belligerent and Neutral Po*er c .
 
 151 
 
 neutral commerce, they hold to be unquestion- 
 ably legal. 
 
 Such persons naturally enough quarrel with 
 the rule of the war 17-56, and they attempt to en- 
 counter the powerful arguments which I have 
 quoted on its behalf, by objecting, 
 
 First — That neutral nations always suffer in 
 their ordinary trade through the wars of those 
 maritime friends with whom they have any com- 
 mercial relations ; and therefore may be reason- 
 ably allowed to acquire some compensatory ad- 
 vantages on the other hand, by the opening of 
 new branches of commerce. 
 
 If neutrals were really losers by the wars of 
 their neighbours, it would, perhaps, be fortunate 
 for mankind; and would give them no right to 
 indemnify themselves, by accepting in the form 
 of commerce, a bribe from the weaker party, to 
 protect him from the arms of the stronger. But 
 in the last and present war at least, this pre- 
 tence has no shadow of foundation. Let the 
 neutral powers confess that their late vast ap- 
 parent increase of commerce, is fictitious, 
 and that the frauds also are gratuitous; or let 
 them admit that independently of the trade in 
 question, they have enormously profited by wars, 
 which to their friends have been highly disastrous. 
 There is no escaping from this dilemma. 
 
 The neutral, however, has many fair indemni-
 
 152 
 
 ties, without any trespass on belligerent rights. — 
 The comparative cheapness of his navigation, 
 gives him in every open market a decisive advan- 
 tage. In the commerce of other neutral coun- 
 tries, he cannot fail to supplant the belligerents ; 
 and the latter will naturally give him the carriage 
 of such of his own commodities as he before 
 usually supplied them with, partly or wholly 
 through their own navigation. What they used 
 formerly to buy in his ports, they will now be 
 content to purchase from him, at an advanced 
 price, in their ow r n. 
 
 He obtains also a still larger increase of com- 
 merce, by purchasing from the one belligerent, 
 and selling to his enemy, the merchandize for 
 which in time of peace they mutually depended 
 on each other. The decay of his old branches 
 of trade, therefore, if any such decay arises from 
 the war, is on the whole amply compensated. 
 
 It has further been objected, " that allowing 
 (C the acquisition of this trade to be a gratu- 
 " itous benefit to neutrals, arising out of the 
 " war, they obtain it by the gift of an inde- 
 " pendent nation, to which at the moment of 
 "that gift it still belonged; and therefore may 
 " lawfully accept the boon, without leave of the 
 " adverse belligerent. France, it is said, still re- 
 " tains possession of her colonies : and, there- 
 " fore, has a clear legislative right to regulate
 
 153 
 
 " their commerce. Great-Britain is not even at> 
 " tempting the reduction of those hostile terri- 
 " tories ; nor are our ships now blockading their 
 " ports ; to profit, therefore, by the change in their 
 " commercial laws, by trading with them when 
 " invited to do so, is not a violation of neutral- 
 " ity." 
 
 This argument is plainly evasive. It is not 
 the right of a belligerent to impart a benefit of 
 this kind, but the right of a neutral to accept it, 
 that is the point in controversy. The carrying 
 of contraband to the enemy, or of provisions to a 
 besieged place, might be defended in the same 
 way ; for the belligerent has an undoubted right 
 to buy those articles, if carried to him, or to con- 
 tract previously for their transmission by the 
 neutral. 
 
 But the belligerent has one set of obligations, 
 and his neutral friend has another, of a very dif- 
 ferent kind ; it is fallacious, therefore, to reason 
 from the rights of the one, to the rights or duties 
 of the other. 
 
 If the legality of any branch of commerce, as 
 between the enemy and a neutral, could entitle it 
 to protection from our hostilities, its illegality, 
 e converso, might reasonably subject it to capture 
 and condemnation. But neutral merchants know 
 to their great advantage, that the latter is not the 
 doctrine of the British prize court. Property 
 
 x
 
 154 
 
 to an immense value was restored during the 
 last war, which was avowedly the subject of a 
 commerce with Spanish territories, contraband 
 at the time of the transaction, by the law of Spain. 
 If our belligerent rights cannot be enlarged by 
 any regard to the commercial law of the enemy, 
 considered merely as such, neither can they be 
 abridged by it. 
 
 Did the transfer in question create no preju- 
 dice to the adverse belligerent, its lawfulness 
 could not be disputed ; but if, on the other 
 hand, its direct tendency is to enable our enemy 
 to elude our lawful hostilities, and to deliver him 
 from the pressure of a maritime war, and if these 
 were manifestly his only objects in the measure ; 
 10 allege the right, or power of the enemy, to 
 change his system, in justification of his neutral 
 accomplice, is to oiler in defence of a wrongful 
 act, no more than that there was an opportunity 
 given for its perpetration. 
 
 It is quite immaterial to the question, whether 
 we are attempting to conquer the hostile colonies, 
 or what is more doubtful perhaps, whether we 
 might not successfully have made such attempts, 
 if not prevented by the elfects of the very mea- 
 sure in question ; for the commerce, not the 
 sovereignty, of the colonies, is that object of 
 hostile interest, which is wrongfully protected 
 against us. The apologist, therefore, should go
 
 155 
 
 on to allege, if he can, that the colonial naviga- 
 tion and commerce, as well as the territory, were 
 perfectly safe from our arms. 
 
 If France should cede to the United States, the 
 island of Martinique, or Spain the province of 
 Mexico, it might perhaps be a material defence 
 for their accepting the grant, though adverse to 
 our interest in the war, that the enemy remained 
 in possession when he made it ; and that the 
 colony was not besieged or invaded ; but since 
 the cession now complained of, is not of the ter- 
 ritory, but of its maritime trade, the foundation 
 of the argument fails ; for the enemy is not in 
 possession, much less in an uncontested posses- 
 sion, of the commerce, which he affects to surren- 
 der. He still holds, indeed, the key of his co- 
 lonial ports ; but the way to them, is occupied by 
 an enemy, whom he can neither resist nor escape. 
 It is not the mere right of landing and taking on 
 board of goods, in the harbour of St. Pierre, or 
 Vera Cruz, but the right of carriage from the co- 
 lony to the transmarine market, that is the subject 
 of the grant to the neutral ; and of this important 
 franchise, the enemy found himself incapable to 
 defend the possession, before he relinquished the 
 right. 
 
 The geographical way itself, indeed, is com- 
 mon to all nations : and we are perpetually told, 
 .that the sea is open and free. But a right of car
 
 156 
 
 r iage may be restrained, in respect of the articles 
 that are carried, and the places to or from which 
 they pass, as well as in respect to the path-way 
 itself. 
 
 The road from London to York, is open and 
 common to all his Majesty's subjects ; but not 
 for the carriage of a mail-bag, to or from any part 
 of the realm, for the profit of private persons. The 
 right of such carriage, notwithstanding the gene- 
 ral freedom of the York road, belongs exclusive- 
 ly to the Post-office; and so did the carriage of 
 colonial produce or supplies, to the parent state, 
 notwithstanding the general freedom of the sea. 
 In this respect, the passage was not open in time 
 of peace ; to allege the common right of navigat- 
 ing the ocean, therefore, in defence of the insidi- 
 ous assignment of the right of carriage, is not less 
 preposterous, than if the freedom of the post- 
 roads, should be offered as an excuse for the un- 
 lawful acquisition or transfer of a post-office con- 
 tract. 
 
 To give the argument we are considering, 
 all possible scope, let it be supposed that the 
 enemy was in full immediate possession, not 
 only of his colonies, but of his ordinary com- 
 merce with them, at the time of relaxing his 
 monopoly. This is certainly to concede much 
 more than is due; since he durst not, at the 
 time, send a ship, under his own colours, to
 
 157 
 
 or from the colonial ports ; and therefore, the 
 possession of the commercial franchise, by its 
 actual exercise, the only mode of possession of 
 Which it is susceptible, was suspended. But 
 supposing the reverse ; still this great branch of 
 commerce became a known subject of belli- 
 gerent contest, on the commencement of a mari- 
 time war ; for it would be trilling to go about to 
 prove, that Great-Britain must always look to 
 the colonial trade of France and Spain, as the 
 first object of her hostilities. When we drew 
 the sword, it was notice to every neutral power, 
 that this commerce was no longer an uncontested 
 possession of our enemies ; but rather a prize 
 set up within the lists of war, the seizure or de- 
 fence of which would be a principal aim of the 
 combatants. If so, how can the assisting our 
 enemies to withdraw the rich stake from the 
 field, be reconciled with the duties of neutrali- 
 
 Let it be supposed, that a large fleet of French 
 and Spanish merchantmen, with their owners on 
 board, were passing the sea under convoy ; and 
 that receiving information on their way, of the 
 position of a British squadron sent out to take 
 them, by which they must infallibly be inter- 
 cepted in a few hours, they should avail them- 
 selves of an opportunity to sell the ships and 
 cargoes to some neutral merchants, whom they
 
 158 
 met with at the moment at sea ; it will hardlv 
 
 J 
 
 be thought that such a transfer would be valid 
 against the British captors, if the squadron 
 should afterwards fall in with and capture the 
 fleet. 
 
 Yet what principle of natural justice makes it 
 otherwise, that does not equally apply to the case 
 of the colonial trade ? The purchase of ships and 
 cargoes at sea, is not a wider departure from the 
 ordinary course of commerce, than trading in su- 
 gar and coffee under foreign flags, in the West- 
 Indies ; the right of the owner to sell, in the one 
 instance, may be alleged as plausibly as the right 
 of the hostile state to open its ports, in the other; 
 and the motive is in both cases the same. 
 
 But when we advert to the principles, on which 
 the trade in question is defended, this illustration 
 is far too weak, to show their injustice. There is 
 not one of them that would not serve to justify the 
 sale of the merchantmen in the supposed case to 
 the neutral, if made after the British squadron had 
 come up, and when it was on the point of taking 
 the convoy. 
 
 The justice of municipal law, may furnish us 
 here with some fair analogies. 
 
 Is property of any kind, when the specific 
 subject of litigation, aliened by the party in pos- 
 session pending a suit for its recovery, and to a 
 person who has notice of that suit ; the accept-
 
 159 
 
 ance of it, is a wrong to the adverse party ; and 
 he may assert against the grantee, though a 
 purchaser at an adequate price, the sarfte specific 
 rights which he had against his first opponent. 
 With equal reason, Great-Britain may exercise 
 against this commerce, 'though assigned to neu- 
 trals, the right of maritime capture. 
 
 Should it be objected, that there is no specific 
 title vested in the adverse belligerent but only a 
 general right of seizure, I answer, that this dis- 
 tinction, though often allowed in favour of com- 
 mercial convenience, is not held by municipal 
 law to affect the equity of the rule when the 
 intent of the transaction is, to defeat such ge- 
 neral rights ; as might be shown by reference 
 to the bankrupt laws, and other parts of our 
 code. 
 
 In the case, for instance, of goods removed by 
 a tenant from his leasehold premises, to avoid a 
 distress for rent, and sold for that purpose to a 
 third person privy to the fraud, the landlord may 
 follow, and seize them within a limited time, even 
 in the hands of the purchaser. The latter also, 
 if an accomplice in the contrivance, is regarded 
 as a criminal, and punished by a forfeiture of 
 double the value of the goods. 
 
 In this, I apprehend, as in the former case, 
 the rule of American law is conformable to that 
 of England; but should the general equity of it
 
 160 
 
 appear at all doubtful, let the following further 
 circumstances be added to the illegal transac- 
 tion. Let it be supposed, that the tenant, in 
 consequence of previous distresses, or from 
 other causes, has no means of sending his own 
 corn or hay to market, by his own waggons, as 
 formerly, so as to avoid a seizure by the land- 
 lord ; and therefore, contrary to all ordinary 
 usage, and to the necessary economy of his 
 business, oilers to sell them in the stack to his 
 neighbours, at a low price, to be conveyed by 
 them, on their own account, in their own ve- 
 hicles, from the premises. Should they, know- 
 ing his necessities, and his dishonest views, take 
 the proffered advantage, and send their own carts 
 and waggons into his farm-yard for the purpose; 
 surely the justice of the rule of law would, in 
 such a case, be readily admitted. The applica- 
 tion is sufficiently obvious. 
 
 It lias been further objected to the rule of the 
 war 17-56, ' f that neutrals are allowed, without 
 " opposition, in other cases, to avail themselves 
 " of various alterations in the laws of the bel- 
 " liferent states, to which the policy of war has* 
 " given birth, and by virtue of which they are 
 " admitted into several branches of trade with 
 " the metropolitan country itself, which were 
 " not open before, as well as encouraged to 
 " engage more extensively in others, by greater
 
 161 
 
 *f privilege and favour than the pacific system 
 " allowed. In some cases, therefore, it is argued, 
 " we ourselves admit, that it is lawful to trade 
 u with an enemy in time of war, in a way not 
 " permitted in time of peace : and should we 
 " now assert a contrary principle, many well- 
 " established branches of neutral commerce in 
 (l the fiuropean seas, and even with Great-Bri- 
 " tain herself, might, be on the same ground 
 " abolished." 
 
 This is an argument of the same family with 
 those modern political sophisms, by which na- 
 tions have been convulsed, and kingdoms over- 
 thrown. 
 
 To confound practical moderation, with theo- 
 retical inconsistency, to reject all principles that 
 cannot be followed into their extreme conse- 
 quences, and to justify one excess by the in- 
 conveniences of another, are effectual weapons 
 for the assault of every legal or political system, 
 and for the defence of every innovation. 
 
 I admit that partial changes in the commercial 
 laws of a belligerent ktate, are occasionally made 
 in favour of neutral commerce ; and that when 
 such changes are calculated to produce an effect 
 on the war, advantageous to the party who makes 
 them, and detrimental to his opponent, they fall 
 in strictness within the principle of the rule of 
 the war 1756, though the commerce of the 
 
 Y
 
 162 
 
 mother country only, not of the colonies, should 
 be their subject. 
 
 But of what nature have been these altera- 
 tions ? Not an unqualified admission, as in the 
 colonial case, of neutral ships, into ports where 
 no foreign prow could enter for any commercial 
 end before ; not an entire surrender of a national 
 privilege, or monopoly, which, in time ofr peace, 
 was always jealously maintained ; much less, an 
 invocation of neutrals, to conduct an intercourse 
 essential to the existence of one part of the em- 
 pire, and which must, otherwise, be totally lost ; 
 but for the most part, only a reduction or remis- 
 sion of duties, and at the utmost, a permission 
 to import or export specific articles, to or from 
 some foreign country, in a manner not allowed 
 before. 
 
 I except, of course, that indiscriminate admis- 
 sion into every branch of the commerce of our 
 enemies, including even their coasting trade, 
 which has now taken place. The comprehensive 
 enormity of the existing wrong itself, will hardly 
 be objected, in defence of its most exceptionable 
 branch ; besides, as to the coasting trade, the 
 employment of neutral vessels in it, is treated 
 bv our prize tribunals as illegal, though the ex- 
 treme penalty of confiscation, has not yet been 
 applied*. Perhaps his Majesty's government, 
 
 * Case of the Emanuel, S< dVrstrom, 4 Robinson, 296.
 
 163 
 
 finding the more lenient sanctions of a forfeiture 
 of freight, "and expenses, and such further dis- 
 couragements as have been hitherto applied, to 
 be wholly ineffectual, ought to consider this a* 
 a branch of illicit trade, to which the forfeiture 
 of ship and cargo should in future be annexed, 
 and to issue an instruction for that purpose *. 
 
 In all other, and ordinary innovations of this 
 kind, the change has rather been in the enlarge- 
 ment of an existing intercourse, than the open- 
 ing of one which had been quite interdicted 
 before. But the change in the colonial com- 
 merce, has amounted, in respect of the flag and 
 the voyage, to an entire revolution ; except in 
 certain free ports, and in some special cases, the 
 entry of a foreign vessel into a colonial port, for 
 any mercantile purpose, is a kind of commercial 
 adultery, to which, till the divorce occasioned 
 by war, no colonizing power submitted. 
 
 This distinction is important, not only to the 
 
 * The fact of hostile property in this trade, as in the rest, is co- 
 vered by such abundant and accurate perjury, that unless a judge 
 were at liberty to act on the firm persuasion of his mind, arising from 
 general presumptions, against the fullest positive testimony, the cargoes 
 can rarely be condemned ; arid consequently forfeiture of freight, is a 
 penalty that can rarely be applied. The further discouragement here 
 alluded to, is the privation of such indulgences, in admission of future 
 evidence, as claimants of property taken in a fair and lawful trade art- 
 entitled to.
 
 164 
 
 nature and extent of the wrong, but to the con- 
 venience of the remedy. 
 
 The redress which the injured belligerent ob- 
 tains, by the seizure of the offending vessels, is 
 naturally offensive in its mode, and liable to 
 abuse in its application. The right of capture, 
 therefore, ought not to be exercised against neu- 
 trals, but in cases which admit of being broadly 
 and clearly defined ; for it is better to submit to 
 many palpable encroachments on the confines 
 of our belligerent rights, than to guard them 
 with a strictness which may be inconvenient to 
 our peaceable neighbours. If it were resolved 
 to apply the rule of the war 1756, to all the 
 branches and modes of European commerce 
 with our enemies, to which neutrals have been 
 admitted during the war, and in consequence of 
 the war, it would be a line of conduct difficult 
 to draw with precision, even in the cabinet > 
 nor however carefully delineated by specific in- 
 structions to our cruizers, would its practical 
 application be easy. It would also give birth to 
 endless distinctions in judgment, and to an in- 
 finity of petty and intricate disputes with the 
 neutral nations ; for let it be remembered, that 
 not the novelty of the trade only, but the motive 
 of its permission by the enemy, is essential to the 
 rule in question.
 
 166 
 
 And here let me point out by the way, a new 
 reason for not allowing the particular manner 
 and motive of an importation into a neutral 
 country, to determine the right of re-exporting 
 the same goods to a foreign market, or its lia- 
 bility to seizure on the way. If the direct trade 
 between the hostile countries and their colonies 
 is to be legalized by nice distinctions, the fact 
 of which a visiting officer can never with cer- 
 tainty discover, it would be better at once to 
 give up the whole of that important rule for 
 which I contend, and allow the intercourse to 
 be conducted by neutrals in a direct and single 
 voyage. 
 
 The colonial trade, however, is further distin- 
 guishable from those other branches of com- 
 merce, which have been the subjects of a like 
 belligerent policy, in some very essential fea- 
 tures* 
 
 It differs from them, not only in the peculiar 
 strictness, and broad generical character of the 
 monopoly by the parent state during peace, 
 which is fraudulently suspended in war ; but in 
 the nature of those interests which it involves, 
 and in the principles on which it is, in its natural 
 course, conducted. 
 
 Strictly speaking, it is not commerce ; though, 
 in conformity to common usage, and for want of 
 an appropriate term, I have hitherto given it
 
 166 
 
 that appellation; and -I cannot help thinking, 
 that the difficulty, (if to any impartial mind there 
 really appears any difficulty at all, attendant on 
 this plain question) would never have been ima- 
 gined, if the anomalous intercourse between a 
 mother country and its colony, had not been 
 confounded in idea, through the use of a vague 
 general name, with ordinary commerce or 
 trade. 
 
 Commerce, in its proper signification, implies 
 both buying and selling ; and in a commercial 
 voyage, goods are usually either transmitted 
 from the seller in one country, to the buyer in 
 another ; or sent on the buyer's account, for sale 
 in a different market. 
 
 But what is the general object of shipments 
 in time of peace, from Europe to a West-India 
 island ? To send for sale, merchandize which 
 has been purchased or ordered, on account either 
 of the shipper or consignee ? No such thing : 
 If we except small quantities of provisions, cloath- 
 ing, and other necessaries, destined for the sup- 
 ply of the few white inhabitants, which are 
 bought in Europe by the agents of the West-In- 
 dia store-keepers, and sent to them on their ac- 
 count, to be retailed in their stores or shops ; the 
 outward cargoes are all shipped by planters, or the 
 agents of planters, and consigned to them, their at- 
 tornies, or managers, for the use of their estates.
 
 167 
 
 Again, on the return voyages, are the cargoes 
 composed of goods, the subjects of mercantile en- 
 terprise, which have been shipped by merchants 
 in the colony on their own account, or on ac- 
 count of merchants in Europe, by whom they have 
 been ordered r By no means : they consist al- 
 most universally, of the produce of the planta- 
 tions, sent by the planters to their own agents in 
 the mother country; or which is much more com- 
 mon, to the planter himself in that country, by his 
 own manager in the colony. 
 
 Am I asked how such transactions differ from 
 commerce ? I answer — in the same degree, that 
 a man sending his own wine, from his cellar in 
 London to his house in the country, differs from 
 commerce ; and in the same degree that a gentle- 
 man farmer, who sends his own corn to his factor 
 in the market town, differs from a merchant. 
 
 In these cases, indeed, inland carriage is used, 
 and in the former, a passage by sea, which, from 
 habitual association of ideas, seems to us to give 
 a mercantile character to the transaction ; but 
 let us divest ourselves for a moment of this pre- 
 judice, and that transmission of goods across the 
 Atlantic by the owners, which we call the co- 
 lonial trade, will be seen to be, it its general na- 
 ture, no more commercial, than the carriage of 
 the wine or the corn, in the cases I have men- 
 tioned.
 
 168 
 
 The plantation stores, indeed, are purchased by 
 the planter, previous' to their shipment ; and the 
 produce will be sent to market by the consignee, 
 and sold, after its arrival: but the commercial 
 transaction in the one case, was finished before 
 the commencement of the voyage ; in the other, 
 it does not commence, till after the voyage has 
 ended. Till the planter, or his agent, sends the 
 produce from the warehouse to the market, it is 
 not in any sense the subject of trade ; and even 
 the ultimate sale, on account of the grower of the 
 commodity, cannot strictly be regarded as a mer- 
 cantile transaction. If it be such, every farmer 
 is a merchant. 
 
 These are far from mere verbal distinctions. 
 They go to the root of the pretences, such as 
 they are, by which the neutral intercourse be- 
 tween the enemy and his colonies is defended ; 
 for if the subject of acquisition by the neutral, 
 is not of a commercial nature, or was not such 
 till made so for the purpose of enabling him to 
 acquire it, there is an end of all the arguments 
 or declamations that turn on the variable and 
 assignable nature of commerce in time of peace, 
 and to all the supposed analogies between this 
 commerce, and other new-born branches of neu- 
 tral navigation. This is not, like the other cases^ 
 merely the carrying on of a trade in foreign bot- 
 toms, and on foreign account, which before was
 
 169 
 
 carried on in native bottoms, and on native ao 
 count; but it is the converting into a trade, of 
 that which before was a mere removal of goods, 
 without any transfer of property. 
 
 A new character, as well as a new conveyance, 
 is given to the exports and imports of the colo- 
 nies. The alleged right to protect them, is found- 
 ed on their being commercial ; but they were 
 first made commercial, in order to be protected ; 
 and if the neutral merchant really carries them 
 on his own account, he does more than was 
 done by the enemy merchants, before the war. 
 Not only the ancient system of navigation, there- 
 fore, but the ancient course of colonial econo- 
 my, is inverted, for the sake of eluding our hostili- 
 ties. 
 
 But there is another, and perhaps a still stronger 
 ground of distinction, between this and all the 
 other branches of commerce, which neutrals have 
 been allowed to conduct in time of war. 
 
 The capital employed in colonial agriculture 
 belongs, for the most part, to the mother coun- 
 try, where the owners or mortgagees reside ; 
 and the produce sent to Europe is chiefly the 
 returns on that capital : consequently the mother 
 country has a beneficial interest in the remit- 
 tance, quite distinct from its commercial use, 
 and which equals or bears a large proportion to 
 its entire value. It is not merely a medium or ve- 
 
 2
 
 170 
 
 hide of commercial gain, or a subject of manu- 
 facturing profit ; but is, abstractedly from its 
 specific form and use, substantial wealth and re- 
 venue. It differs from ordinary commercial im- 
 ports, as corn-rent paid to a land-holder, differs 
 from the purchased corn of the miller or specula- 
 tor in grain. 
 
 Let the effects of this difference, as to the perils 
 of carriage in war, be fairly considered. 
 
 In other branches of trade, to destroy the com- 
 mercial profit of an enemy, or highly aggravate 
 the price of a particular commodity consumed by 
 him, is to make him feel effectually the pressure 
 of the war ; and these ends may possibly be ac- 
 complished, notwithstanding his resort to the pro- 
 tection of neutral flags. 
 
 In respect of goods which he buys to sell again 
 to foreigners, either in the same or a meliorated 
 state, and even in respect of manufactures for fo- 
 reign markets, of which a native commodity is the 
 basis, the enhanced price of maritime carriage 
 may be fatal to his hopes of profit. You ruin the 
 trade, when you cut off the gains of the merchant. 
 But his colonial produce is, for the most part, the 
 returns of a transmarine capital already laid out 
 and invested. The importation of it, therefore, 
 cannot cease to be beneficial to him, unless you 
 could raise by your hostilities the price of car- 
 riage, till it became equal to the entire gross 
 value of the commodity. Nothing else; except
 
 171 
 
 the actual interception of the produce by cap- 
 ture, can make him feel the full effect of the war. 
 
 In other cases also, to force him out of his 
 ordinary methods, or established channels of 
 trade, might be to destroy the trade itself. If he 
 could no more import raw silk or cotton, by his 
 own navigation into France, or could no longer 
 buy goods in the Levant or the East-Indies, to 
 sell them again in the north of Europe, his fac- 
 tories at Smyrna and Canton might be abandoned. 
 But the case is very different in respect of the 
 returns of his colonial capital. As long as French 
 or Spanish sugar and coffee, can pass from the 
 West-Indies, under neutral colours, or even on 
 neutral account, to any market on earth, so long 
 the colonial interests of the planter, and of the 
 state, will be partially, if not wholly, protected 
 from the ruinous effects of war : the value of 
 the produce will find its way to France and Spain, 
 though the produce itself should be excluded. 
 
 I infer, then, from these essential distinctions, 
 that if we were bound to submit to all the other 
 encroachments of the neutral flag, their admis- 
 sion into the ports of the hostile colonies, might 
 still be fairly and consistently resisted. 
 
 Perhaps these flimsy defences may not be 
 thought worthy of the time that has been spent 
 in their refutation ; and yet I know of none more 
 specious that the apologists of neutral encroach-
 
 m 
 
 ments have offered. In general, a vague and 
 senseless clamour, is their substitute for argu- 
 ment. " Piratical depreciations," and " mari- 
 time despotism," are phrases which they inces- 
 santly repeat y and like the vociferations of " stop 
 thief," by a pickpocket, it is a species of logic, 
 which, if it proves not their innocence, at least 
 favours their escape. 
 
 After all that has been, or can be said, on this 
 important subject, one plain question will proba- 
 bly be felt to be decisive, by every equitable mind. 
 
 Quo animo ? — With what intention, did the 
 enemy open the ports of his colonies to foreign 
 flags ? 
 
 If it was with commercial views, or for the 
 mere sake of imparting a benefit to friendly 
 powers, their acceptance of the boon may, per- 
 haps, be justifiable : but if the single, manifest, 
 undissembled, object was to obtain protection 
 and advantage in the war, to preserve his colonial 
 interests without the risk of defending them, 
 and to shield himself in this most vulnerable 
 part, against the naval hostilities of England ; I 
 say, if such was the manifest, and known pur- 
 pose of the measure, I see not how any dispas- 
 sionate mind can doubt for a moment, that a co- 
 operation in such an expedient, by powers in 
 amity with England, was a violation of the duties 
 of neutrality.
 
 173 
 
 The motive, indeed, on their part, may not have 
 been hostile ; it was the covetous desire, perhaps, 
 only of commercial gain ; but if they give effect 
 to a belligerent stratagem of our enemy, whether 
 of an offensive, or defensive kind, knowing it to 
 be such, they become instruments of his insidious 
 purpose, and accomplices in his hostile act. If 
 the commercial motive can defend them from 
 the charge of inimical conduct, then let the hired 
 assassin, who acts without malice to the victim, be 
 absolved from the guilt of the murder. 
 
 Is it then a doubt, I will not say with any 
 statesman, but with any individual merchant, in 
 America, Prussia, or Denmark, that security and 
 advantage in the war, were the sole objects of this 
 measure with the belligerent governments that 
 adopted it ? They themselves have never lent 
 their neutral accomplices so much countenance, 
 as to pretend the contrary. Some of them did 
 not scruple even to recite the obvious truth, in 
 the public instruments, by which their ports were 
 opened. 
 
 But the avowal was unnecessary: and could 
 a doubt on this subject have existed during the 
 last war, it would have been precluded in the 
 present, by the intermediate conduct of those 
 powers, after the peace of Amiens. So far was 
 the change of system from being permanent, as 
 was argued, on behalf of the neutral claimants
 
 174 
 
 in the last war, that orders were sent to reverse 
 it, the moment the sword was sheathed. Even 
 those foreigners, who had a right to remove their 
 property from the hostile colonies, within a limit- 
 ed time, by virtue of the treaty of Amiens, could 
 not obtain liberty to use their own ships for the 
 purpose : nay, Bonaparte, with all his predilec- 
 tion for the slave trade, refused permission to 
 the planters of Tobago, to import negroes on 
 their own account in foreign bottoms. 
 
 On the other hand, the first advices of a new 
 war with Great-Britain, were accompanied, in all 
 the colonies, with orders to open their ports again 
 to all the former extent. 
 
 The hardiest champion of this commerce then, 
 will now scarcely venture to deny, that it not only 
 grew out of, but is to end with the war. Should 
 we, however, hear again of any doubt on that 
 point, or of the title to commercial advantages 
 under a grant from our enemies, let the grant it- 
 self be produced ; let a treaty between our 
 enemies and any neutral power be shown, by 
 which the possession of these advantages is secur- 
 ed for a single moment. 
 
 Some engagement of that kind, might seem 
 necessary, even to the security of the neutral 
 merchants, if they really carry on the colonial 
 trade, as they pretend, with their own capitals, 
 and on their own account: for how are they to
 
 175 
 
 collect and bring away the immense funds, which 
 they are continually representing, in our prize 
 courts, to have been intrusted by them to their 
 correspondents in the colonies, and to purchasers 
 of their outward cargoes, resident there, if the 
 ports, on the cessation of war, are suddenly sub- 
 jected again to the ancient monopoly ? We have, 
 however, I admit, heard of no inconvenience 
 having arisen from this source, subsequent to the 
 treaty of Amiens. The doors were suddenly 
 shut, but there have been no complaints that any 
 neutral wealth was shut in. It had vanished, no 
 doubt, like the gold and jewels of an Arabian 
 tale, on the reversal of the talisman that pro- 
 duced it. 
 
 If then this trade has not the promise, or hope 
 of existing beyond the war that gave it birth, 
 the advantage arising from it in the war, is the 
 palpable and only object of the enemy in open- 
 ing it, and the neutral cannot in this, as in for- 
 mer cases, pretend that there was a different, or 
 even a concurrent motive, such as may excuse 
 his acceptance of the benefit. The service to 
 the enemy, in a belligerent view, is the rent 
 paid for the possession of a commerce, which is 
 strangely pretended to be neutral : and the term 
 is by tacit compact to cease, when that rent can 
 be rendered no longer. 
 
 But, it is not only in its motive and purpose
 
 176 
 
 that the transaction is of a hostile character. I 
 have shown, also, that the effects actually produc- 
 ed, are of a kind most directly hostile and injuri- 
 ous ; that the commerce in question, not only pro- 
 tects, but strengthens our enemies, and puts ma- 
 ritime arms again into their hands, for our future 
 annoyance and ruin. 
 
 This neutrality, is like that of the poetic dei- 
 ties, who, when it is unlawful to them to engage 
 in the battle, not only cover their favourite hero 
 with a cloud, and withdraw him from the pur- 
 suit of his opponent, but restore to him the 
 sword, which he had previously lost in the com- 
 bat. 
 
 Let me, however, refer our Christian, though 
 very unreasonable friends, to a better standard, 
 than that of poetic divinity. St. Paul holds him- 
 self an accomplice in the murder of Stephen, 
 though he took no active part in it beyond keep- 
 ing the clothes of the assassins : but on the prin- 
 ciple of the pretensions I am combating, this 
 was neutrality. Nay, St. Paul might have in- 
 nocently gone much further, than thus to faci- 
 litate the act, by the accommodation of those who 
 were engaged in it. He might not only have 
 taken care of their clothes, but furnished them 
 stones for their purpose.
 
 177 
 
 Without attempting further to illustrate this 
 Very plain, though controverted subject, I con- 
 clude, that the illegality of this commerce, is as 
 certain as its mischievous tendency ; that to en- 
 gage in it, is to interpose in the war, for the pur- 
 pose of rescuing our enemy from our superior na- 
 val force ; or, in the terms of an expressive meta- 
 phor sometimes applied to it, " hosti imminenti 
 eripere hostem ;" and that the merchants who thus 
 grossly violate the duties, have no claim to the 
 rights of neutrality. 
 
 Such is the obvious remedy for this grand evil 
 in the war, and such our right of applying it. 
 
 The other abuses of the neutral tlag, a parti- 
 cular examination of which does not belong to 
 my present plan, admit not of so simple a cure ; 
 for they chiefly consist in the fraudulent carriage 
 of hostile property, under the cloak of a fictitious 
 neutrality, in voyages which fall within the law- 
 ful range of neutral navigation. To these, there- 
 fore, no general remedy can be applied, unless 
 a method could be found of either increasing, 'in 
 the minds of neutral merchants, respect for the 
 obligation of veracity, or obviating in our courts 
 of prize, the deceptious influence of false- 
 hood. 
 
 2 A
 
 178 
 
 In truth, the unprecedented extent and success 
 of fraudulent claims, is a natural and almost un- 
 avoidable effect of the long duration of maritime 
 war, especially in a war, the circumstances of 
 which have excited, beyond all former example, 
 the efforts of deceit in our enemies and their 
 neutralizing agents. 
 
 To make this truth perfectly intelligible and 
 clear, it would be necessary to spend more time 
 than I or my readers can spare, in an exposition 
 of the practice of the prize courts. I must be* 
 contented with observing, that the original evi- 
 dence which is to justify a capture, and lead to 
 condemnation, must be obtained from the cap- 
 tured vessel, either i-n the papers which are put 
 on board by the alleged owners and shipper* 
 themselves, or in the testimony of the master 
 and the other persons on board, when examined 
 on standing interrogatories. Since then the evi- 
 dence all proceeds from the ostensible proprietors 
 themselves, or from their agents, or witnesses in 
 their service and pay, it cannot be supposed that 
 facts will often be brought to light intentional- 
 ly, which the true owners may desire to conceal. 
 It may even create surprise, that a captor is 
 ever able to establish a case in point of evidence, 
 which will entitle him to a favourable sentence : 
 nor would this often happen, if the standing in- 
 terrogatories were not very numerous and close,
 
 179 
 
 and so wisely framed by the light of progressive 
 experience, that it is difficult for a witness, not 
 previously apprized of their terms, so to answer 
 them all, as to support consistently, in all its parts, 
 the necessary tale of falsehood. 
 
 But, unhappily, after a war has lasted long, the 
 neutralizing agents, and the masters and officers 
 they employ, become perfectly well acquainted 
 with the nature of this ordeal of the prize court 3 
 so that the witnesses have a preconcerted answer 
 ready to every interrogatory that is proposed to 
 them. It is a well known fact, that in certain 
 eminent neutralizing ports on the continent, the 
 master and other officers, usually interrogated in 
 the Admiralty, are rigidly and repeatedly examin- 
 ed by their employers, before the vessel sails, on 
 our standing interrogatories^ till they have learnt 
 to answer in all points, promptly and accurately, 
 and consistently with the colourable case which is 
 in the event of capture to be supported. 
 
 With equal skill and care, are those affidavits 
 and documents now prepared in neutral coun- 
 tries, which the British prize court usually re- 
 quires on a decree for further proofs. — In short, 
 every neutral izer of eminence, is become al- 
 most as expert in the rules of our Admiralty, 
 in regard to evidence, as a proctor at Doctors' 
 Commons.
 
 180 
 
 It is evidently not easy to remedy evils like these ; 
 and the more difficult it is, the more indispensa- 
 bly necessary is it not to widen their range, by 
 suffering that of the neutral flag to be unlawfully 
 extended. 
 
 The growing cunning and dexterity of those 
 who are the ordinary and fraudulent suitors in 
 the prize court, can only be in any degree coun- 
 teracted, by an increasing vigilance and patience 
 of investigation, as well as increasing experience, 
 in the judges ; and for this, as well as other rea- 
 sons, it was wise to appoint men of professional 
 talents, with salaries adequate to the full value 
 of their time, to preside in the vice-admiralty 
 courts. 
 
 Is there after all, it may reasonably be demand- 
 ed, no other redress for violations of neutral du- 
 ties, than capture and condemnation in the prize 
 court ? I answer, that though the offending 
 party certainly ought to be punished by his own 
 government, on the complaint of the injured bel- 
 ligerent, yet mutual convenience has given rise 
 to the usage of leaving the latter, in ordinary cases, 
 to avenge himself, by treating as hostile the pro- 
 perty which is engaged in the offence ; for other- 
 wise, the trespasses of individuals, might furnish 
 endless occasions of diplomatic controversy be- 
 tween friendlv nations.
 
 181 
 
 New or extreme cases, however, generally 
 demand a departure from ordinary rules ; and 
 the unprecedented grossness of the abuses which 
 now exist, seems to me to demand, in this in- 
 stance, an appeal to the justice of the neutral 
 states, against their offending subjects. Such a 
 resort seems to be the more proper and neces- 
 sary, on account of the querulous and conten- 
 tious disposition which is said to have been lately 
 exhibited by some of those powers, notwithstand- 
 ing: the extreme licence in which thev have been 
 hitherto indulged. 
 
 It is highly disadvantageous for an accused, 
 but much injured party, to stand wholly on the 
 defensive ; and in a case like this, it tends perhaps 
 to give colour to the accusation in the eyes of 
 indifferent judges ; nay, the people of the neutral 
 country itself may be misled, by the reiterated 
 and noisy complaints of their own merchants, 
 and of the disguised agents of our enemies re- 
 sident among them, when unopposed by any ex- 
 postulation on our part, or any exposure of our 
 wrongs*. 
 
 Their ambassadors and consuls in England 
 
 * There is great reason to believe that the ministers or emissarii s 
 of the French government, procure the insertion in the Ami rican papers 
 of many of those false and iacendiary paragraphs; by which this 
 country, in spite of her extreme indulgence, is insulted mid defamed in 
 
 that country.
 
 182 
 
 also, are perpetually solicited and stimulated by 
 the captured neutralizes, to whose frauds they 
 are no doubt strangers, to represent their imagi- 
 nary wrongs. These parties are always more 
 troublesome than the genuine neutral merchant j 
 and are the most clamorous asserters of the re- 
 spect due to their flag, for the same reason that 
 a fashionable sharper is, in his quarrels, often 
 more punctilious than a real gentleman, in main- 
 taining the point of honour. It is not his senti- 
 ment, but his trade. The neutral ministers, in 
 consequence, present memorials and remon- 
 st ranees ; and their governments, perhaps, are in- 
 duced to take up the dispute. But if abuses of 
 the neutral flag, were made grounds not merely 
 of defence, but of voluntary and original accusa* 
 tion, and if the punishment of the offenders were 
 firmly demanded, the latter would often deem it 
 prudent to be silent ; while the neutral govern- 
 ments and their ministers, if they had serious 
 and frequent complaints to answer, would have 
 less leisure, and less inclination to complain; 
 they ought therefore, I think, under present 
 circumstances, to be pat in their turn on the de- 
 fensive. 
 
 Our only effectual remedy, however, must be 
 found in that ancient and just resort, the seizure 
 and confiscation of the property which is the 
 subjeit of illicit transaction?.
 
 —pf 
 
 183 
 
 £d. Of the prudence of applying the proposed Re- 
 medy, in regard to the Colonial Trade. 
 
 It remains only to consider, as I proposed to do 
 in the last place, whether it is prudent to resort to 
 that remedy for the evils which have been delineat- 
 ed, our right of applying which has, I trust, been 
 sufficiently shown. 
 
 In this as in most other questions of practical 
 policy, especially in the present very difficult 
 times, it is vain to expect that the alternative to 
 existing evil, should be complete and unqualified 
 good. We are sailing in a tempestuous sea, sur- 
 rounded with rocks and shoals ; and the ques- 
 tion is not, whether, by changing our course, 
 we shall certainly have a prosperous voyage ; 
 but whether the ship will labour less, and the 
 breakers in sight be avoided. 
 
 It has been shown, that the extreme licence 
 of the neutral flags, teems with mischiefs of a 
 ruinous and fatal tendency to our commerce, to 
 our colonies, to our wooden walls themselves, 
 and to our best hopes in the war ; and it remains 
 to see, what new evils or dangers must be en- 
 countered, should this pernicious licence be re- 
 strained. 
 
 The sum of all these opposing considerations 
 seems to be this, " we may provoke a quarrel
 
 184 
 
 " with the neutral powers." I propose, there- 
 fore, briefly to consider, first, the degree of this 
 danger ; and next, whether the evils of such a 
 quarrel, if certain, would be greater than those 
 to which we at present submit. A €i f+L- / 9 g 
 
 It is certain, that should his Majesty's govern- 
 ment think fit to recal the indulgent instruction 
 that has been so much abused, and revert to the 
 rule of the war 17-56, with such modifications 
 only as can be safely allowed, great clamours 
 would immediately arise in the neutral coun- 
 tries. Toe neutralizing agents, deprived of a 
 large portion of their fraudulent gains, would 
 exclaim aloud against the measure ; and even 
 such merchants as have carried on the colonial 
 trade on their own account, would not be well 
 satisfied to find their field of commerce ma- 
 terially narrowed by the assertion of our bellige- 
 rent rights. 
 
 The neutral governments therefore would no 
 doubt complain and remonstrate ; " but would 
 " they, if firmly, though temperately, resisted, 
 " push the controversy into a quarrel ?" would 
 they maintain their pretensions to the trade in 
 question, at the expense of a war with Great- 
 Britain ? I iirmly believe they would not : be- 
 cause I am sure they ought not, whether they 
 regard their honour, their duty, or their interest.
 
 185 
 
 Much though the principles of justice are un- 
 happily made to bend to political convenience in 
 the conduct of nations, they have not yet wholly 
 lost their force. Like the merits of an honorary 
 quarrel among gentlemen, they may at least serve 
 for a basis of conciliation between parties who 
 have no very urgent mot ire, or determined 
 inclination, to fight. They will save the point of 
 honour j for a nation cannot be disgraced by re- 
 ceding from pretensions which are demonstrably 
 groundless and unjust. 
 
 I cannot help hoping, however, that with our 
 Jate fellow-subjects of America at least, the equity 
 of our cause will have a more direct and powerful 
 influence ; for I have marked as an auspicious 
 omen, in this vernal season of their power, a re- 
 verence for moral principle prevailing in their su- 
 preme representative assembly, and triumphing, 
 in matters of interior legislation at least, over the 
 suggestions of an ungenerous policy. 
 
 It cannot be supposed, that the great body of 
 the American people are at this period partial to 
 France, or inimically disposed to Great-Britain. 
 If they are insensible to the ties of a common 
 extraction, and if the various sympathies of re^ 
 ligion, language, and manners, that ought to in- 
 cline them favourably towards us, have lost their 
 natural influence, they still cannot be regardless 
 of the interesting fact, that we alone, of all the na- 
 
 2 B
 
 186 
 
 tions in the old world, now sustain the sinking 
 cause of civil liberty, to which they are so fondly 
 attached. They see that the iron yoke of a mili- 
 tary despotism is now rivetted on the neck of that 
 powerful people, which aspires to universal do- 
 mination ; and which has already deprived its de- 
 fenceless neighbours of the freedom they formerly 
 enjoved ; nor can they doubt that the subjugation 
 of England, would be fatal to the last hope of li- 
 berty in Europe. 
 
 Is the Atlantic thought a sufficient rampa? t for 
 themselves, against the same despotic system ? 
 The people of America are neither so ungene- 
 rous, nor so unwise, as to act on that mistaken 
 confidence. They will advert to the state of 
 things, which a disastrous issue of the present 
 war might produce. They will contemplate the 
 possible approach of a political prodigy, more 
 terrific than any that earth has yet beheld — 
 France lord of the navies, as well as the armies, 
 of Europe. They will look to the South, and 
 see the resources of the Spanish American em- 
 pire in the hand of this Colossus ; they will 
 look behind them, and regard a large country, 
 in which, were the British government sub- 
 verted, religion, extraction, and language, would 
 favour the ambition of France. Nor will they 
 forget, that this unprincipled power is crafty, 
 as well as audacious ; that she well knows how to 
 divide those whom she means to subdue ; and
 
 187 
 
 has already broken confederations as sacred, as 
 that of the American states. 
 
 It will not be thought, that the new world 
 has no adequate temptations to attract the am- 
 bition of the French government, or to excite it 
 to arduous efforts. The armies of St. Domingo 
 will be remembered. Nor will the constrained 
 and prudent cession of Louisiana, efface the 
 recollection of that alarming line of policy, by 
 which it was acquired. 
 
 But should America be safe, in her distance, 
 in her unanimity, and in her interior defensive 
 resources, still what would become of her com- 
 merce, if France were enabled to give law to the 
 maritime world ? 
 
 Is it supposed that Bonaparte, or his imperial 
 successors, will tolerate in their ports, a moment 
 longer than is necessary, a republican flag ? Vain 
 imagination ! Had he even no antipathy to free- 
 dom, the plague, or the yellow fever, would have 
 less terrors, than such a mischievous memento to 
 " his best and greatest of peoples." At this mo- 
 ment he relies on the evident necessity of re- 
 moving such dangerous examples, as a sufficient 
 apology to Europe for putting crowns on the 
 heads of the nominal republics around him*. 
 
 The citizens of the United States are a sa- 
 gacious people, and will reflect on these things. 
 
 * See one of his answers to ther Austrian manifesto.
 
 18$ 
 
 They will see that they have a commercial in- 
 terest, at least, if not interests of far greater im- 
 portance, which forbid their aiding France at this 
 alarming conjuncture, to overthrow the indepen^ 
 dence of Europe. 
 
 Widely different was the face of affairs in 1794 
 and 179*5, when their commerce with the French 
 colonies was a subject of dispute with Great- 
 Britain. It was natural at that period, that the 
 people of America should have good wishes for 
 the liberty of France, and some jealousy of the 
 confederated powers. Yet even then, they were 
 too w 7 ise, and too just, to rush into a quarrel with 
 this country, in support of their present extreme 
 .and unfounded pretensions ; though the instruc- 
 tion of November 1793 had, as I have already 
 admitted, given them some specious grounds of 
 complaint. The legal merits of the question 
 were then, as I fear they still are, very little 
 understood in America ; but the moderation of 
 Mr. Jay found a middle point of agreement ; 
 and though, unfortunately, the same spirit did 
 not prevail among his constituents, so far as to 
 induce them to ratify the treaty throughout, we 
 may reasonably regard the conduct of the Ameri- 
 can government at that time, as a proof of the 
 pacific temper of the people ; and as a pledge, 
 that the strong equity of our present case will 
 not, under the more favourable circumstances of 
 the times, be obstinately disregarded.
 
 189 
 
 Happily, we have not here to do with a people, 
 to whose understandings and feelings no open ap- 
 peal can be made. 
 
 I regard it as not the least perilous circum- 
 stance, in the present situation ot' Europe, that 
 by the unprecedented despotism exercised over 
 the press in France, in a positive, as well as 
 negative mode, an ardent and intelligent people 
 cannot only be kept in profound ignorance of 
 the true nature of public events, and the real 
 conduct of their government towards foreign 
 nations, but impressed with a belief of facts 
 diametrically opposite to the truth; for by these 
 means they can be made to engage cordially in 
 any measures, however contrary to their own 
 honour and interest, as weii as to the safety of 
 their neighbours. The case seems absolutely 
 new ; not only in degree, but in species ; for the 
 ministers of France, professing only to direct an 
 official corner in one of their many newspapers, 
 are in truth the political editors of all - } and they 
 even oblige such foreign prints, as they allow to 
 be brought into the country, to usher in or con- 
 firm their own mendacious statements ; so that a 
 curious public is actually starved into the diges- 
 tion of their poisonous intelligence, from the want, 
 of any other food. 
 
 Under other despotic governments, if the peo- 
 ple have had no means, they have had as little 
 inclination, to canvass affairs of state. Ignorant
 
 190 
 
 and indifferent, their bodies have been at the dis- 
 posal of the sovereign; but popular opinion, and 
 feeling, are powerful engines in the hands of a go- 
 vernment, which their characters could not sup- 
 ply ; and hence the strength of an absolute, has 
 been counterpoised by the spirit and energy of a 
 free constitution; but by inviting a highly civiliz- 
 ed people to reason, and cheating them with fal- 
 lacious premises, both these advantages are for- 
 midably united. The public, in this unnatural 
 state, becomes a centaur, in which brutal force is 
 monstrously associated with the powers of a ra- 
 tional agent. 
 
 But in America, the government, if it could be 
 supposed to feel the wish, has not the power, 
 so to influence popular opinion. The grounds 
 of every public measure, more especially a mea- 
 sure so awfully serious as war, must be fairly 
 known, and freely canvassed by the people. 
 They will hear, and examine, the reasons which 
 demonstrate the commerce in question to be an 
 invasion of the rights, and dangerous to the se- 
 curity of England ; and if, unlike the Carthage- 
 nians, they feel no wish to succour their parent 
 country, when fighting for her liberty and her ex- 
 istence, they will at least desist from wrongs which 
 augment her dangers, and frustrate her defensive 
 efforts. 
 
 On the probable feelings and conduct of the 
 neutral courts in Europe, I forbear to hazard
 
 191 
 
 so confident an opinion. While I write, every 
 wind wafts over from the continent rumours of 
 new wars, new alliances, new declarations of neu- 
 trality, and new breaches of those declarations ; 
 so that it is impossible for any private judgment to 
 foresee, whether any, and what European powers 
 will sustain the neutral character, when these 
 sheets issue from the press. 
 
 Beyond doubt, the accession of new parties to 
 the war, will materially affect the tone of neu- 
 tral pretensions on this side of the Atlantic ; and, 
 I trust, not unfavourably to the true principles 
 of the maritime code. The generous and mag- 
 nanimous policy of our allies, will induce tfiem 
 to respect the rights of neutral nations; but they 
 can have no wish to favour abuses which tend 
 to feed the revenues of France, and to defeat the 
 best efforts in offensive war, that can be contri- 
 buted on the part of Great-Britain. It is their 
 part, chiefly to oppose the armies of the com- 
 mon enemy in the field ; it is ours, to diminish 
 greatly the resources by which those armies are 
 maintained, and to make the French people feel 
 in their commerce, the evils of war, in spite of 
 their lying gazettes ; but to countenance the 
 present encroachments of the neutral powers, 
 would be to forbid that essential assistance ; and 
 to render our active co-operation feeble, if not ab- 
 solutely useless.
 
 192 
 
 Both in Europe, however, and in America, we 
 have still stronger grounds of hope, that our just 
 rights, if firmly asserted, will not be resisted at 
 the cost of a war; for the plain interest of the neu- 
 tral powers themselves, will incline them to an op- 
 posite course. 
 
 What, after all, is to them the value of this 
 new commerce, by which our enemies profit 
 so largely ? A i'ew merchants, or pretended 
 merchants, are enriched by it, chiefly through 
 fraudulent means ; but their ill-gotten wealth, 
 will, with the common fate of opulence sudden- 
 ly and unjustly acquired, speedily vanish away j 
 without leaving any lasting effect on the com- 
 merce of their country, except the taint of their 
 immoral practices, and their exotic luxury of man- 
 ners. 
 
 In North America especially, such will be the 
 certain result. A great many of her most emi- 
 nent neutralizes, and West-India merchants, are 
 natives, either of the belligerent countries which 
 they trade with, or of other parts of Europe ; 
 and when the business of the war is finished, 
 they will not stay to contend, in the permanent 
 commerce of America, with her frugal and in- 
 dustrious citizens; but return to more congenial 
 regions, with the fortunes they have rapidly ac- 
 quired. Even with the native Americans them- 
 selves, the effect of wealth forced in this com- 
 mercial hot-bed, will be a strong disposition to
 
 193 
 
 migrate, when peace puts an end to their trade j 
 for it is not to be dissembled, that this new coun- 
 try has not such attractions as Europe, for mer- 
 chants who have grown suddenly rich in it, by 
 means of exterior connexions. 
 
 Far superior in every country, but especially 
 in one that is newly and imperfectly settled, 
 is the value of that commerce which is the 
 natural growth of the place, which feeds on, 
 or sustains, its manufactures, its agriculture, and 
 the industry of its people, and is therefore per- 
 manently affixed, as it were, to the soil ; to that 
 of a commerce temporary and extraneous, which 
 is prosecuted to and from a foreign land, and has 
 no connexion with the country of the merchant, 
 but that of mere passage and sale. Yet, in the 
 neutral countries, the former and more estimable 
 species of commerce, is impeded in its growth, 
 and even reduced in its extent, by the artificial 
 increase of the latter. That which may be called 
 the native commerce of the country, is kept 
 down and discouraged, by the diversion of ca- 
 pitals, the increase of freight and wages, the 
 advanced price of warehouse-room, and inland 
 carriage, and of the other various expenses at- 
 tendant on the importation or exportation of 
 goods ; all which are necessary effects of a great 
 and sudden increase of mercantile operations, at 
 a neutral port, through its trade with belligerent 
 countries. 
 
 2 C
 
 194 
 
 Besides, it unavoidably happens, that the frauds 
 which are committed in the new branches of 
 commerce opened with belligerents, fall sometimes 
 heavily, in their effects, on the honest part of 
 the mercantile body in the neutral country, even 
 when conducting their ancient and natural com- 
 merce. Their ships and cargoes are involved in 
 the general suspicion deservedly attached to their 
 flags, and to their commercial documents, and the 
 public testimonials they carry. 
 
 They are consequently seized, brought into 
 port, and perhaps, on examination, discharged. 
 But they have sustained considerable loss by de- 
 tention j and what is to be done ? Is a captor 
 to be punished for suspecting the truth of docu- 
 ments, which, in a great majority of similar 
 cases, are notoriously false ? It would be like 
 punishing an officer for taking up on suspicion 
 an honest man, but a stranger to him, whom he 
 found in company with felons. Were captors 
 to pay costs and damages in such cases, it would 
 be charity to our naval officers to renounce alto- 
 gether the right of maritime capture ; yet, if the 
 capture is held justifiable, a fair trader smarts 
 for the sins of his countrymen — the rate of in- 
 surance as well as all other charges, is conse- 
 quently raised on neutral shipments in general. 
 
 The old and genuine Prussian merchants, as 
 I am well informed, complain greatly of these
 
 195 
 
 evils ; and murmur at the improper use that is 
 made of their flag, as freely as they dare. 
 
 But in the case of America, able as she is to 
 enlarge her permanent commercial establish- 
 ments in various directions, to the utmost ex- 
 tent that her capital or credit can afford, and 
 unable, from the want of hands, to promote 
 sufficiently that vital interest, the extension of her 
 agriculture, the encouragement of a temporary 
 carrying trade, at the expense of her native com- 
 merce, must be peculiarly impolitic. It is, as if 
 a landholder should take a scanty provision of 
 manure from his freehold lands, which are in ur- 
 gent want of it, to dress a field of which he is 
 tenant at will. 
 
 I cannot believe, therefore, that the intelli- 
 gent citizens of the United States, unengaged 
 in the new-found colonial commerce, would be 
 very sorry to see it restrained ; much less that 
 they would tenaciously defend it, at the cost 
 of an evil so destructive to their growing pros- 
 perity as a war with Great-Britain. 
 
 Let it be considered, that the trade in ques- 
 tion is but a part of that new and lucrative 
 commerce, which the war has conferred on the 
 neutral nations in general. Were their trade with 
 the colonies of our enemies wholly cut off, many 
 other very valuable branches of commerce would 
 remain, which they hold by no other tenure than 
 the neutrality of their flag.
 
 196 
 
 But it is not my purpose to recommend a total 
 and unqualified prohibition, of even the colonial 
 trade ; I have maintained, indeed, our right to 
 interdict it without reserve, on the assumption 
 that it was wholly prohibited by the enemy in 
 time of peace ; a proposition generally true, but 
 which is liable to an exception, that I have hither- 
 to forborne to notice. 
 
 To one particular nation, and at certain free 
 ports in the French islands, the importation and 
 exportation of certain specified articles under a 
 foreign flag, were allowed, before the commence- 
 ment or contemplation, of the last war. Ameri- 
 cans, could import their native provisions and lum- 
 ber in their own vessels ; and could receive in re- 
 turn those inferior articles of colonial produce, 
 rum, taffia, and molasses. Thus far, therefore, an 
 exception to the rule of the war 1756 is, perhaps, 
 demanded by the principle of that rule ; and it 
 seems due also on another score ; for we have re- 
 laxed our own colonial monopoly, in an irregular 
 manner, to the same extent ; and it is right to 
 admit the principle of equality in such cases. — 
 " Injure belli, quod quis sib i sumit, hostibus tribu- 
 endum est" 
 
 But we might even, as a voluntary sacrifice to 
 amity with the neutral powers, go considerably 
 further: we might, perhaps, without any very 
 serious mischief, extend to all the ports of the 
 French colonies, and to every neutral nation,
 
 197 
 
 the privileges enjoyed by Americans at some of 
 those ports in time of peace. Nay, we might, 
 perhaps, allow an intercourse of the same spe- 
 cies, and subject to similar restrictions, with the 
 colonies of Spain and Holland. 
 
 By such concessions, it is true, our belligerent 
 rights would be narrowed, and the hostile colo- 
 nies, in some measure, relieved from the pressure 
 of the war; but if the more valuable articles of 
 their produce, their sugar, coffee, cotton, cocoa, 
 indigo, and bullion, were prevented from eluding 
 our hostilities under the neutral flags, the greater 
 part of the evils which I have noticed would be 
 remedied ; and the farmers of America, having 
 the same markets for their produce, as under the 
 present licentious system, would all find their in- 
 terests on the side of conciliation and peace. 
 
 If permitted to retain such a portion of the 
 trade in question, together with all the rest of 
 such existing commerce, as is the fair fruit of 
 their neutrality in every quarter of the globe, 
 what motive could these nations find for asserting 
 their further, and unjust pretensions by arms? 
 To suppose that commercial interest would excite 
 them to do so, is to suppose, that for the sake of 
 a part, they would wilfully sacrifice the whole. 
 
 The neutralizing agents themselves, would be 
 the hrsl: to shrink from a definitive quarrel- 
 They would clamour, while they hoped to pre-
 
 --/ 
 
 198 
 
 vail in extorting from our fears or our prudence, 
 acquiescence in all their lucrative encroachments; 
 hut when convinced by our firmness that this end 
 is not attainable, they would become, instead of 
 sticklers for war, the staunchest advocates for 
 peace. They will not be so simple as to ruin 
 their own business, by exchanging the neutral, 
 for the belligerent character. 
 
 I rely not, however, on these men, but on the 
 equity and good sense of their countrymen at 
 large, who know how to distinguish between the 
 selfish clamours of individuals, and the dictates 
 of national prudence. Our brethren of Ame- 
 rica, especially, know how to value the bless- 
 ings of peace ; and the wise government of that 
 country has shown itself, in this and all other 
 points, in unison with the sense of the people. 
 They will not, therefore, sutler their passions to 
 be inflamed by groundless suggestions, and 
 plunge into a war, against the clearest dictates 
 both of policy and justice. 
 
 Since, however, it is right in so important a case 
 to calculate on every chance, and to be prepared 
 for every possible consequence, of a change of 
 system, I will, in the last place, suppose, that the 
 only alternative to the sacrifice of our maritime 
 rights, is a quarrel with the neutral powers.
 
 199 
 
 If so, the question is, which of these two great 
 evils is the worst ? and I hesitate not to answer, 
 beyond all comparison, the former. 
 
 The arms of the powers now neutral, added to 
 those of the present confederates, if so mon- 
 strous a coalition could be imagined, would add 
 something, no doubt, to our immediate dan- 
 gers ; but acquiescence in the present abuses, 
 must, unless the power of France be broken 
 on the continent, ultimately insure our ruin. 
 Looking forward, as we are bound in prudence 
 to do, to a long-protracted war, it is demonstra- 
 ble, from the premises I have shown, that we 
 must, before the close of it, lose our naval su- 
 periority, if the enemy is allowed to retain, and 
 still continue to improve, his present oppressive 
 advantages. 
 
 While he is preparing the means of active ma- 
 ritime enterprises, we are reduced at sea, as well 
 as on shore, to a mere defensive war. While our 
 colonies, and our colonial commerce, arc labour- 
 ing under great and increasing burthens, those 
 of the enemy, comparatively unincumbered, are 
 thriving at their expense. While freight, war 
 duties, and insurance, are advancing in England, 
 the expense of neutralization is daily diminishing 
 in France, Holland, and Spain. Competition, 
 and the safety of neutral carriage, are reducing 
 it every day. Meantime, the hostile navies arc; 
 nursed, augmented, and reserved in safety for a
 
 200 
 
 day of advantageous trial; while our own is sus- 
 taining all the most laborious duties of war, with 
 scarcely any of its ancient encouragements ; our 
 seamen, also, are debauched into foreign employ, 
 to carry on the trade of our enemies. In what 
 must this progress end ? 
 
 " But our trade would be materially injured 
 " by a war with the neutral powers." It Avould, 
 probably, be so in some degree ; at least in the 
 beginning; nor am I insensible of the great im- 
 portance of such an inconvenience, in a view to 
 immediate revenue. 
 
 But these considerations, important though 
 they are, may be justly superseded by others. To 
 sacrifice our maritime rights, for the sake of our 
 custom-house entries, would be like keeping up 
 the pulse of a hectic patient, at the expense of his 
 vital organs, instead of that more rational treat- 
 ment which, though weakening at the moment, 
 can alone lead to a cure. 
 
 Our two great rival statesmen, though their 
 views unhappily do not often coincide, have 
 agreed in declaring our unexhausted means of 
 finance to be still copious ; and the opinion is 
 highly eonsolinsr. But, if we dare not assert our 
 essential maritime rights, for fear of reducing 
 our exports, they are both greatly mistaken. 
 We are already at the end of our resources. It 
 is idle to say that we are still able to carry on the 
 war, if we cannot carrv it on without renounc-
 
 201 
 
 ing, for the sake of revenue, the means of making 
 war with effect. It is like a soldier selling his 
 arms, to enable him to continue his march. 
 
 The notion, however, that any great diminu- 
 tion of our trade, would result from the supposed 
 quarrel, is not better founded than the fear of the 
 quarrel itself. 
 
 Is it asked, v< who would afterwards carry our 
 (( manufactures to market ?" I answer, our allies, 
 our fellow r -subjects, our old and new enemies 
 themselves. In the last war, nothing prevented 
 the supplying of Spanish America with British 
 manufactures, in British bottoms, even when they 
 were liable to confiscation by both the belligerent 
 parties for the act, but that the field of commerce 
 was pre-occupied, and the markets glutted by the 
 importations under neutral flags *. 
 
 " But would I advise a toleration of these new 
 " modes of relieving the hostile colonies ?" Its to- 
 leration would not be necessary. Even your own 
 hostilities would not be able to overcome the ex- 
 pansive force of your own commerce, when deli- 
 vered from the unnatural and ruinous competition 
 of its present privileged enemies. You might of- 
 ten capture the carriers of it, and condemn their 
 cargoes ; but the effect would chiefly be to raise 
 the price upon the enemy, and the difference 
 
 * fase of the Chesterfield, at the Cockpit, 1804. 
 
 2 T)
 
 '202 
 
 would go into the purses of your seamen. The 
 prize goods themselves, would find their way from 
 your colonies into the hostile territories. 
 
 But I do not affirm, that it would be necessary 
 or proper in the case supposed, absolutely, and 
 universally to refuse protection to British mer- 
 chandize, when passing to the enemy, or colonial 
 produce received in exchange for it, in British, 
 or even in hostile bottoms. 
 
 At present, the royal prerogative of suspending 
 the rights of war, in favour of particular branches 
 of commerce or particular merchants, is very li- 
 berally exercised. Papal dispensations, were not 
 more easily obtained in the days of Luther, than 
 dispensations from the law of war, now are from 
 his majesty's government : but let it be remem- 
 bered, that when the Pope thus relaxed the ancient 
 war of the church against sin, he shook his own su- 
 premacy ; and these salt-water indulgences, tend 
 perhaps to produce a similar effect, on the mari- 
 time greatness of England. I am far from blaming 
 the exercise of this wholesome prerogative, in a 
 moderate degree, and upon well investigated 
 grounds ; as for instance, when it enabled our 
 merchants to import corn, during a scarcity, from 
 Holland ; but when it is used for the mere con- 
 venience and profit of every merchant who chooses 
 to apply for it, and who can oiler some flimsy ex
 
 203 
 
 parte suggestion of public utility, in his petition 
 for a licence ; the practice becomes a new and 
 dangerous inroad on that great maritime system, 
 which it behoves us so much to maintain. 
 
 Should, however, the neutral powers be in- 
 sane enough to go to war with us, for the sake 
 of the colonial trade, the well regulated use of 
 this prerogative would soon show them their 
 folly ; and obviate every inconvenience to which 
 our own commerce might, in consequence of the 
 new war, be exposed. Though I cannot under- 
 take to defend the consistency of licensing to Bri- 
 tish subjects a trade with the enemy, from which 
 we claim a right to exclude neutral nations, yet 
 should those nations attempt to compel a surren- 
 der of that important right, by cutting off our 
 commerce, the remedy would be consistent and 
 just. The distress of the hostile colonies would 
 soon present most tempting markets for our mer- 
 chandize ; — the demand also would be great in 
 the United States; and America would be una- 
 ble to prevent even her own merchants, from be- 
 ing the carriers of British manufactures to her 
 own ill-guarded coast, as well as to the ports of 
 our present enemies. If the strict revenue laws, 
 and naval force of Great-Britain, cannot prevent 
 smuggling and trading with an enemy by her 
 own subjects, how is this new power, with its
 
 204 
 
 5ax government and feeble marine, to restrain its 
 merchants from similar practices ? 
 
 Should it be found necessary in the case sup- 
 posed, to licence any commerce of this kind, 
 whether in British, or foreign bottoms, we might, 
 as far as respects the trade of the hostile colonies, 
 have the benefit without the disadvantage of the 
 present traffic. Not a hogshead of sugar, in the 
 case supposed, ought to be protected from the 
 hostile West-Indies, except in its way to the Bri- 
 tish market ; there to be taxed in such a degree 
 as would preclude the present superiority of the 
 enemy in a competition with our own planters. 
 Neither ought a single article to be carried by li- 
 cence to those colonies that can serve to extend 
 their existing scale of cultivation. 
 
 I protest, in every event, on behalf of the 
 British planter, against the further settlement 
 of Cuba, by a relaxation in any mode, of the 
 rules of maritime war. During the last war, 
 the produce of that vast island was at least dou- 
 bled ; and if the present system continues, it. will 
 soon be doubled again to the destruction of our 
 own sugar colonies; for the consumption of 
 West-India produce in Europe, has natural limits ; 
 and the Jamaica Assembly has satisfactorily shown 
 *hat those limits are scarcely now wide enough 
 to receive the actual supply, at such prices as 
 the British planter can possibly afford to accept.
 
 205 
 
 The same observations which I have offered 
 as to the new channels of commerce, which we 
 might have to explore in oar transatlantic trade, 
 apply equally to Europe. Besides, there would 
 here still remain friendly territory on the conti- 
 nent, the ports of our co-belligerents, and even 
 maritime powers, neutral in relation to them, 
 whose countries would be entrepots for our com- 
 merce. The bugbear of a non-importation agree- 
 ment by America, is liable to the same remarks, 
 and would be a measure more absurd even than 
 war, on the part of that country, for it would in- 
 jure herself alone. 
 
 After all, what am I endeavouring to combat ? 
 The notion, that manufactures in demand all over 
 the globe, for their superiority in quality, in cheap- 
 ness, and, even in the case supposed, tor salety 
 in maritime carriage, can be effectually excluded 
 from the commercial countries in which they 
 are at present consumed ! — I might have more 
 brietly appealed to the first principles of com- 
 mercial science. I might have appealed even 
 to the impotent attempts of France in the last and 
 present war. I might further support myself by 
 the fact, that in the utmost latitude given to neu- 
 tral commerce in the colonies of Spain, there 
 was an express and anxious exception of British 
 merchandize, which was wholly without effect*., 
 
 * Case of the Vera Cruz and the Emelia.
 
 £06 
 
 But the intelligent reader will dispense with all 
 such arguments. He may not, indeed, be able 
 to foresee clearly what will be the new channels 
 of our trade, when the old are forcibly obstruct- 
 ed ; but he can look down on the level below 
 the regions of the existing demand and consump- 
 tion, and be certain that there the stream will 
 soon meet his eye again, in spite of the new ar- 
 tificial mounds and embankments. 
 
 In a word, take care of your maritime system, 
 and your commerce will take care of itself. 
 
 Were it not necessary to hasten to a conclusion, 
 I might show, that the commerce of the country, 
 is much more endangered by the existence of 
 the present abuses, than it could possibly be by 
 any effects of their correction. The case of our co- 
 lonial trade, has been the only commercial evil 
 which I have distinctly considered ; but that of 
 the merchants trading with Germany and Flan- 
 ders might afford another striking instance of 
 the mischiefs of a licentious neutrality: it has 
 been lately stated to the public, in a compen- 
 dious, but forcible manner, on the part of the 
 suffering merchants, and apparently by one of 
 their body*. 
 
 It may be right to notice another alarm, 
 ■that has been grafted on the idea of a quarrel 
 
 * See some essays in the Times, in September las*.
 
 207 
 
 with the United States. America, it has been 
 said, is much indebted to our merchants ; and 
 she will confiscate their property. America, I 
 answer, is too wise, and I believe, also, too ob- 
 servant of national honour and justice, to adopt 
 so opprobrious a measure. It would be an act 
 subversive of all future faith and confidence, 
 between herself and the merchants of Europe : 
 It would not only stain her character, but mate- 
 rially retard the growth of her commercial inte- 
 rests, in every part of the globe. She will now, 
 should a quarrel ensue, have no pretence for 
 any other resort, than that of honourable war. 
 At the period of 1794, she pretended, with some 
 show of reason, that she had been unfairly sur- 
 prised, by an order to capture her vessels, with- 
 out previous notice or complaint : but no room, 
 of course, will be given for such a charge at this 
 time, should our government wisely resolve to 
 assert our belligerent rights *. If the citizens of 
 the United States can possibly be persuaded to 
 think, that we are bound to submit to the ruinous 
 eiTects of that assistance to our enemies, which 
 
 * Let it nut be supposed, however, that there is any shadow of 
 ground for the complaints now making of want of notice respecting the 
 coilusire double voyages: the judgments in the cases of the Essex, the 
 Enoch, and Rowena, were founded oh a rule already known in Ame- 
 ika ; and which the ckimaats were fraudwlently attempting to dude,
 
 208 
 
 they choose to call neutral commerce, at least it 
 will be felt that our resistance is no act of wanton 
 enmity, much less a provocation to more than le- 
 gitimate war. 
 
 There is, however, another securit} r against 
 such an injurious and disgraceful act on the 
 part of America ; or rather against any quarrel 
 whatever with that power at the present con- 
 juncture. The property under the American 
 flag, which would be now exposed to our hos- 
 tilities in every part of the world, is immense. 
 In 1794, the merchants of the United States were 
 few and poor ; now, they are many and rich : 
 then, the collective value of their property at 
 sea, might be very small in comparison with 
 what they owed to our merchants ; at this time, 
 after the large deductions that ought to be made 
 for property which is but nominally their own, the 
 former must bear a large proportion of the latter- 
 
 But America, though rich in commerce, is not 
 so in revenue; and were her trade destroyed by 
 the effects of a rupture with this country, a 
 great burthen of war taxes must be immediately 
 imposed on the landholders ; who have no debts 
 to English merchants to retain; who, as I have 
 shown, would have no interest in the Mar; and 
 who are neither very able, nor very well disposed, 
 to submit to a heavy taxation. 
 
 Those, in short, who suppose that America
 
 209 
 
 would be easily now brought to engage in a war 
 with any great maritime power of Europe, know 
 little of the commerce, and less of the interior 
 state of that country. 
 
 Such are my reasons for believing, that a quarrel 
 with the neutral powers, would not be the price 
 of asserting our maritime rights in respect of the 
 colonial trade ; and for concluding that such a 
 quarrel, if certain, would be a less formidable 
 evil, than those to which we at present submit. 
 
 Should any reader be disposed to dissent from 
 both these propositions ; he will, perhaps, sub- 
 scribe to a third — It would be better, by an ex- 
 press and entire surrender of that ancient mari- 
 time system on which all our greatness has been 
 founded, to put ourselves on a par with the ene- 
 mv, as to the advantages and disadvantages of 
 neutral commerce ; than continue to submit to 
 these ruinous innovations, of which all the bene- 
 fit is his, and all the evil our own. 
 
 Let us subscribe at once to the extravagant 
 doctrines of Sehlegel, or to those of Bonaparte 
 himself; let us admit the old pretension of 
 " free ships free goods," and that the seizing hos- 
 tile property under a neutral flag, is piracy, or ma- 
 ritime despotism — then, following the exam- 
 ple of our enemies, let us suspend our naviga- 
 tion laws, that we also may have the beneht of 
 neutral carriage in all the branches of our trade
 
 210 
 
 — let brooms be put at the mast-heads of all our 
 merchantmen, and their seamen be sent to the 
 fleets. 
 
 By no means short of these, can we be deliver- 
 ed from the ruinous inequalities under which we 
 at present labour ; and these, alarming though 
 their novel aspect may be, would in truth be less 
 evils, than those which the present system, if long 
 persevered in, must unavoidably produce. 
 
 It would, however, be a still better expedient, 
 if the enemy would kindly concur in it, to ab- 
 jure, on both sides, the right of capturing the 
 merchant ships, or private effects of an enemy 
 — in other words, to reconcile, as some visiona- 
 ries have proposed, a naval war with a commer- 
 cial peace. Our neutral friends might then be 
 dismissed by both parties ; and would, perhaps, 
 in the next war, be content to gather up the chief 
 part of the spoils of the weaker belligerent, with- 
 out wrangling, as now, for the whole. 
 
 But the French government is, probably, too 
 conscious of its present advantages, to concur in 
 this arrangement: nor would it, I verily believe, 
 consent to respect British property when passing 
 under the neutral flag, if we were disposed to an 
 equal forbearance. 
 
 "What then remains to be done ? — to make peace 
 with Bonaparte ?
 
 211 
 
 It is the utter impracticability of such an ex- 
 pedient that gives to my subject its most anx- 
 ious and awful importance. His power and his 
 pride may possibly be broken by a new war on 
 the continent, or new revolutions may deliver 
 France from his yoke ; but if not, w ; e arc only 
 at the commencement of a war, which our long- 
 continued maritime efforts alone can bring to a 
 safe, much less a prosperous close. You may 
 make treaties with Bonaparte, but you cannot 
 make peace. He may sheath the sword, but the 
 olive-branch is not in his power. Austria may have 
 peace with France ; Russia may have peace with 
 France ; but Great-Britain can have no real peace 
 with that power, while the present, or any other 
 military usurper, brandishes the iron sceptre he 
 has formed, and is in a condition to hope for our 
 ruin. 
 
 Am I asked, what is the insuperable obstacle? 
 I answer, the British constitution. I can repeat, 
 ex animo, with the church, that we are fighting 
 " for our liberty and our laws," for I believe that 
 their surrender alone could obtain more than a 
 nominal peace. 
 
 France, under her ancient monarchy, could 
 loo!; across the streights of Dover without envy 
 or discontent; for her golden chains, burnished 
 as they were by thcsplen lour of genuine royalty, 
 rivetted by the g< iitle ban 1 of time, and hallow-
 
 212 
 
 ed by a reverence for ancient hereditary right, 
 were worn with pride, rather than humiliation or 
 dislike. The throne stood upon foundations too 
 strong, as its posssesors fully thought, to be en- 
 dangered by the example, or by the contagious 
 sentiment of freedom. 
 
 But can the new dynasty entertain a similar 
 confidence ? — Let Bonaparte's conduct and lan- 
 guage attest, that he at least, is not so simple. 
 During that brief term of pretended peace, to 
 which he reluctantly submitted, what was his 
 employment out of France, as well as within 
 that country, but the subversion of every thing, 
 which approached the nature, or bore the name 
 of freedom r In his treatment of the little states 
 around him, he was even ostentatious of his con- 
 tempt of the civil liberty they enjoyed or affect- 
 ed : and he does not scruple now to avow, in the 
 face of Europe, the very principle I am ascrib- 
 ing to him, though in different language, in his 
 apology for his treatment of Genoa and the Ita- 
 lian republic. 
 
 English liberty was happily beyond his reach ; 
 and it was necessary to temporize, while a con- 
 test with the negroes suspended those prepara- 
 tion:- for a new war, whi< li he would soon have 
 made in the wesi m world, and in India; but 
 his ,-v-v,i- .' exhibited incessantly, not only his 
 hostile mind, but (lie iru< cause of its hostility.
 
 213 
 
 Our freedom, especially the freedom of our press, 
 was the subject of bitter invective. By political 
 hints, lectures, and addresses, he laboured inces- 
 santly to convince Frenchmen, that there is no 
 possible medium in society between anarchy an'd 
 his own military despotism ; but, as the known 
 case of England was an unlucky knot in this theo- 
 ry, which he could not immediately cut asunder 
 with his sword, his next, and anxious purpose, 
 was to confound our freedom with licentiousness, 
 to render it odious, and to hint, as he broadly did, 
 that it is incompatible with the common peace 
 and security of Europe. 
 
 Had he not even the audacity to remonstrate 
 to his Majesty's government, against the freedom 
 of our newspapers, and to demand that our 
 press should be restrained ? But we cannot be 
 surprised at this — Darkness, as well as chains, 
 is necessarv for this svstem ; and while it is li<rht 
 at Dover, he knows it cannot be quite dark at 
 Calais. 
 
 The enmity of this usurper, then, is rooted in 
 a cause which, I trust, will never be removed, 
 unless by the ruin of his power. He says, " there 
 is room enough in the world both for himself and 
 us." 'Tis false — there is not room enough in it, 
 for his own despotism and the liberties of Eng- 
 land. He will cant, however, and even treat,
 
 214 
 
 perhaps, in order to regain the opportunity which 
 he threw away by his folly and guilt at St. Domin- 
 go, and his splenetic temper at Paris. — He would 
 make peace, I doubt not, anew, that he might re- 
 cover the means of preparing better for war ; but 
 would be impatient and alarmed, till he could 
 again place the fence of national enmity, between 
 the people of England and France. 
 
 These prospects, I admit, are cheerless ; but 
 let us not make them quite desperate, by surren- 
 dering our natural arms. There are conjunctures 
 in which 
 
 " Fear, admitted into public councils, 
 " Betrays like treason." 
 
 — But the reins are in no timid hands; and, after 
 all, unless we mean to abandon all that remains 
 yet unsurrendered of our maritime rights, peace 
 is more likely to be maintained with the neutral 
 powers, by a linn than a pusillanimous conduct ; 
 for experience has shown that they will not be 
 content, while any restriction whatever remains 
 on their intercourse a\ ith the enemy, which fraud 
 cannot wholly elude. 
 
 To conclude. — A temperate assertion of the 
 true principles of the law of war in regard to 
 neutral commerce, seems, as far as human fore- 
 sight can penetrate, essentia! to our public safety.
 
 215 
 
 In HlM, at whose command " nations and 
 " empires rise and fall, flourish and decay," let 
 our humble confidence be placed ; and may we 
 be convinced, that to obey his righteous laws, 
 is the soundest political wisdom, the best provi- 
 sion we can make for our national safety, at this 
 momentous period. 
 
 But, if he wills the end, he wills also the ade- 
 quate means — Let us not, therefore, abandon 
 the best means of defence he has given ; let us 
 cherish OUR VOLUNTEERS, OUR NAVY, AND 
 
 Maritime Rights. 
 
 FINIS.
 
 6 2 8 6 xg
 
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