she will not incur this hazard, is, that she considers the unregulated exercise of our claim, as striking at the very vitals of her power. She is rendered the more tenacious as to the exercise of her own right, because she knows, that, although it is productive of injury to us, the tendency of it, is by no means as fatal, as in the other case. She exposes us by it, to distress and humiliation, but not to ruin.

With regard to our own situation, the authors of the address, make several very just and striking observations." In a practical point of view," say they, "and so long as the right of flag is restrained, by no regard to the interests of others, a war on account of impressments is only a war for the right of employing British seamen on board of American merchant vessels. But the undersigned are clearly of opinion, that the employment of British seamen, in the merchant service of the United States, is as little reconcileable with the present, as with the permanent interests of the United States themselves. The encouragement of foreign seamen is the discouragement of the native American. The duty of government towards this valuable class of men, is not only to protect but to patronize them. And this cannot be done more effectually than by securing to American citizens the privile navigation. In attempting to spread our

of American over foreign

ers, its distinctive character has been lost to our own citizens. The American seamen, whose interest it is to have no competitors in his employment, is sacrificed, that British seamen may have equal privileges with himself."

The question now occurs, how should this nation act, under such circumstances, as those stated in the two preceding paragraphs? The solution is to be found, in the following solid maxims laid down in the address. "If the exercise of any right to the full extent of its abstract nature, be consistent with the safety of another nation, morality seems p require that in practice its exercise should in this respect be modified.

"Certainly moral obligation demands that the right of flag like all other rights should be so used, as that while it protects what is our own, it should not injure what is another's. "A dubious right should be advanced with hesitation; an extreme right should be asserted with discretion."

To these axioms we would add the following, often and solemnly inculcated by the writers on public law;-that it is not permitted to be inflexible, in uncertain and doubtful questions between nations. Were the case otherwise, peace could never

be maintained; for there cannot exist two people maintaining a commercial intercourse especially, between whom there will not constantly arise disputable claims of right. To preserve peace, there must be mutual concessions; a compromise of interests. This course is indispensable for their prosperity, and no ways incompatible with honour.

From all these premises, the authors of the address justly conclude, that war could not be proper on account of a violation of right, before all hope of reasonable accommodation or compromise had failed: that even after the extinguishment of such hope, it could not be proper, until our own practice was so regulated, as to remove, in the foreign nation, every reasonable apprehension of injury:-that, on any supposition, the calamities of war were not to be incurred, in vindication of a principle, of the justice of which we could not be thoroughly satisfied, and which we could never hope to establish by war; there being, not the most remote probability, that the British would ever, through any means of coercion we possess, be brought to abandon their doctrine or practice. It is notorious, that our administration have not done, before entering on the war, what was due to justice; that is, so regulated the righich they claim for our flag, as to remove the serious inju ith which it threatens Great Britain. Nor were they without good grounds for believing, that an arrangement leaving the right undetermined, but providing efficaciously, for the prevention of the abuse on both sides,and more they should not ask,-might be effected, as soon as they themselves would consent to acquiesce in it. The proof of this, is to be found in the previous conduct of Great Britain, as narrated in the address.

At one time, when Mr. King was minister in England, she had consered to relinquish altogether, the practice of impressment one high-seas; reserving only the exercise of it on the narrow seas; and even that reservation, as Mr. King alleges in his correspondence, might have been done away, "had more time been left him for the experiment." On another occasion, she offered to pass laws "making it penal for British commanders to impress American citizens on board of American vessels, on the high-seas, if America would pass a law making it penal for the officers of the United States, to grant certificates of citizenship to British subjects." This proposition was rejected by our ministers in London, "under their peremptory instructions:" but another arrangement was at length suggested, and adopted, by them; an arrangement

which Mr. Monroe the present secretary of state, then chief of the mission in England, has since, in his correspondence with Mr. Madison, described as, "both honorable and advantageous to the United States, and as containing a concession in their favour highly favourable to their interests." It was nevertheless, disavowed here. Our seamen who have been since impressed, may well regard the administration, that refused to ratify this arrangement, as the primary cause of their sufferings.

Such was the accommodating spirit manifested by England. We are, indeed, vaguely told by Mr. Madison in his message, that "the British government was formally assured, of the readiness of the United States, to enter into arrangements, such as could not be rejected, if the recovery of British subjects were the real and sole object, but that the communication passed without effect." We are not told, however, when, where, or how this readiness was intimated; or what was the tenor of the arrangements, to which this peremptory character is ascribed. It cannot, indeed, be a matter of surprise, if the British ministry, after the refusal on our part, to ratify the arrangement made with Mr. Monroe, distrusted the professions of Mr. Madison, on the subject, an ave but little attention to any general, loose propositions accommodation. It cannot be a matter of surprise, if, after they had observed the unequivocal disposition of our rulers, to push the American principle of right to the extreme,-if, after they had learned the fact, that the clamor here, with respect to the abuses of their practice, was principally kept up by foreigners, and our sensibility most strongly excited, by the impediment it offered to the safe emigration of British subjects to this country,-if, after they had noted the sanction lent to the grossest exaggerations of those abuses,* they should have suspected the whole affair with us, to be a mere party juggle, and believed it to be the determination on this side, to keep the question open as a source of irritation.

The authors of the address dwell at some length, on the English blockade of May 1806, which is alleged as a substantive cause of war, in the two manifestos of the government, and has been so frequently urged by the French emperor, as the justification of his Berlin decree. They trace its

It is worth remarking, with what complacency, both Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, in their official communications, use the loose and comprehen, sive term " thousands of our seamen," &c. Ꭰ .

VOL. IV.

history with the proper minuteness, and place the whole subject in a point of view, that reflects the highest, and most merited discredit on the administration. When we first read the war-message of the president, we were struck with the specification, concerning the blockade just mentioned, as one of the most shameless and hollow, of all the pretences employed to justify the resort to arms. It will be recollected by most of our readers, that this blockade including the coast from the Elbe to Brest, was but an extension of a real, executed blockade, of the ports from Ostend to the Seine, previously existing; that its provisions did not go, as is usual with blockades, to prohibit all trade with the ports or coast named, but merely to interdict the entry of vessels, trading directly from a port of the enemies of Great Britain, or laden with enemy's goods, or contraband of war. We ourselves, have no doubt, but that the British, under all circumstances, had a right to interrupt the trade which alone it prohibited, without any declaration of blockade. Be this as it may, however, they professed to apply an adequate naval force, so as to render the measure strictly legal.

If ever a nation was so situated as to justify her, in a departure from thrict principles of blockade, or in the application of thos retaliation, it was Great Britain in this instance. France had just completed the establishment, of a municipal authority of her own, in all the ports of the coast in question, for the purpose of preventing the entry of goods of British origin, and of confiscating them wherever found, and to whomsoever belonging, although the cities of Emden, Bremen and Hamburg comprised in this violent usurpation, still claimed a neutral and independent character. France moreover, was just then menacing Great Britain with a formidable invasion; the " army of England" as it was styled, was assembled at Boulogne, and her mighty preparations for attack, extended as far as the Elbe;-the general of her right wing having declared, that he was busy in constructing fifty flat-bottomed boats on that river. This novel state of things is said to have been one of the real, although policy would not allow it, to be one of the ostensible inducements, of Mr. Fox, for instituting the blockade of May 1806, which he regarded as a means of strengthening the security of his country, in the midst of perils altogether peculiar, and in the last degree formidable. Was it for the United States, a neutral, and of course bound to sympathize with the Hanseatic towns, in their indignation, against the gross outrage thus committed by the French on their

neutral rights, was it for the United States, seeing, likewise, as they did, the invasion, with which England was then directly menaced, ever afterwards to countenance the French government, in the assertion, that this blockade rendered her the aggressor, in the new war on neutral rights, of which the Berlin decree formed a part;-or, at the instigation of France, to demand its abrogation, as preliminary to that of the Berlin decree?

It is correctly stated in the address, that one of the motives of the British ministry, in instituting the blockade of May 1806, was the promotion of American views and interests, in relation to the French colonial trade, which had been a ground of dispute, and was then in a train of adjustment by treaty. This assertion is confirmed, by the testimony of the war manifesto, of the house of representatives, which, after having inveighed strongly against the original iniquity of the blockade, acknowledges, nevertheless, "that it was conceived in a spirit of conciliation, and intended to lead to an accommodation of all differences between the United States and Great Britain." Unquestionable proof is afforded in the address, that its legality was never doubted, or disputed by our government, until the French ruler coupled it with the question of the repeal of his own decress, and that it neer was made the subject of complaint during its practical continuance. Mr. Monroe, who was our minister in London, at the time of its enactment, in communicating it to Mr. Madison, speaks of it as unexceptionable; and states "that it promises to be highly satisfactory to our commercial interests." "As late as Ŏctober 1811," says the address, "the same gentleman writing as secretary of state to the British minister, remarks of the same blockade of May 1806, "It strictly was little more than a blockade of the coast from Seine to Ostend. The object was to afford to the United States an accommodation respecting the colonial trade."

In the offers made by Mr. Jefferson to discontinue the embargo, as to England, upon certain conditions, the repeal of this blockade was never required.-But for something still more direct and conclusive, as to the point of ministerial consistency, let the reader attend to the following passage of the address. "The non-intercourse act of March 1809, and the act concerning commercial intercourse' of May 1810, vest the president of the United States, with the very same power, in the very same terms. Both authorize him, in case either Great Britain or France shall so revoke or modify her edicts