instance of successful imposition on their credulity, and a prominent indication of the necessity of investigating for themselves the evidences of a fact on which the peace of nations may depend. Nothing is n.ore prevalent than the notion that America has been the accomplice of France in the assertion of those maritime doctrines which we have contested; nothing more certain than the contrary.

The pretensions of France are three-fold.

1. That free ships make free goods.

2. That naval stores should not be considered contraband of war. 3. That an investment by land as well as by sea, is necessary to constitute a legal blockade.

I enter not at present on the question of the retaliation upon your friend, of the injustice of your enemy; that subject shall be considered anon: these are the questions of Maritime Rights, asserted by France, which the public has been led to believe, and which ninety-nine in the hundred do believe, to be equally asserted by the American Government.

It is in vain to oppose mere assertion to an opinion so inveterate, or even to challenge authority in support of it: the reply would be like that I have received this day from a very respectable man, who conceived that he had given all necessary attention to the subject, "that tho' documents were not at his fingers' ends, he was sure they existed, and it was only on the best authority that he had ascertained the fact." Let us, however, have recourse to the litera scripta.

In the 17th Article of our treaty with America, in 1794, the right to enemy's property in a neutral ship is expressly recognized : "If any property of an enemy should be found on board such vessel, that part only which belongs to the enemy shall be made prize, and the vessel shall be allowed to proceed with the remainder without any impediment."

Has America since contested this right of the Belligerent ?-so far from it, in the instructions of Mr. Madison for forming the treaty of 1806, we find these words: "She (Great Britain) will find in both, (received authorities and usage,) that a neutral vessel does not protect certain objects denominated contraband of war, including enemies serving in the war, nor articles going into a

blockaded port; nor as she has maintained, and as we have not contested, enemy's property of any kind." In the 8th article of the

above treaty this instruction was carried into effect. The 9th conforms with the British doctrine relating to naval stores. The treaty was not ratified indeed, because it made no definitive provision for the protection of American seamen from impressment: a motive for suspending the ratification, totally unconnected with either of these objects.

On the question of the necessity of an investment by land as well as by sea to constitute the legality of a blockade, the American government has always acquiesced in the British doctrine, that such investment was not necessary. In a letter of the 30th September, 1800, from Chief Justice Marshall, then Secretary of State, of the United States, to Mr. King, then their minister at this court, the necessity of such an investment is given up, on the ground (certainly not a ground that an obstinate litigant would admit) of " a departure from principle that had received some sanction from practice;" and all that the American government has ever required, to legalise a blockade, is in the very words of our treaty with Russia in June, 1801, that there should be ships stationed sufficiently near the port to create a manifest danger of entering. And accordingly when the question was called up, in the correspondence between Marquis Wellesley, British Secretary of State, and Mr. Pinkney, American minister here, we find the latter, in a letter of the 14th January, 1811, repelling the insinuation of French influence in the councils of the United States, in a style of fervid eloquence which his great opponent could never rebut. "It is by no means clear that it may not fairly be contended, ou principle and early usage, that a maritime blockade is incomplete, with regard to states at peace, unless the place, which it would affect, be invested by land as well as by sea. The United States have called for the recognition of no such rule.” "What I have to request of your Lordship therefore is, that you will take our views and principles from our own mouths; and that neither the Berlin decree, nor any other act of any foreign state, may be made to speak for us what we have not spoken for ourselves." There is a redundance of evidence to the same effect, which has been printed for parliament, and for the public, but which nobody

reads. I shall not however trouble you at present with any more of it; but just observe that I have sought in vain through the whole correspondence, and in every act and deed of the American government that has come to my knowledge, for any thing at all contradictory of what is here asserted. I will remark too, by way of episode, that, in this acquiescence in our doctrines, America has gone farther than any of our high and mighty friends in Europe have done, or will do-mind the future. The manner in which this plain state of facts has been so perverted as to make the direct contrary pass upon the public, and thereby excite that hostile spirit, which nothing but a presumed combination with France could provoke, will be next considered.

NO. III.

We are now to advert to the manner in which the truth has been so perverted as to imbue the public mind with a notion, (directly contrary to the fact,) of American hostility to our maritime rights. And, in respect to free ships making free goods, it must be admitted that if the desire of the American government were equivalent to a demand, this privilege has been demanded.

As we had treaties with every state in Europe, save Sweden and Russia, and even with the states of Barbary, in which this freedom was allowed; it is no matter of wonder that it should have been a subject of discussion at the time when the beforementioned treaty was made. General Washington considered it a part of the modern Law of Nations: to compare small with great, so did I. The convenience resulting from such a general rule, and the great number of stipulations whereby it was adopted in practice, led easily to the conclusion, that it might be considered as having glided into the code through the avenue of conventional law; and this opinion prevails even now in every state in Europe but our own.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that a special stipulation, far from establishing its own object as a general rule, is in the nature of an exception that establishes the contrary; and in this

view of the case, the greater the number of stipulations, the more multiplied was the evidence, that in the law, as it stood, neutral ships had not the right to protect enemy's property.

Still with so many treaties favoring the measure; and notamment that with France as late as the year 1787; it would have been rather unneighbourly, and contra verecundiam, to have refused it to the United States. But here lay the difficulty. At the time of those compacts, both the parties were at peace, or in contemplation of it; but at the time of Lord Grenville's treaty with Mr. Jay, America was at peace, but England at war. Now it will be seen at once that the reciprocity, which, when both parties were at peace or both at war, gave an equal chance of benefit, depending on the contingency of which party should be first at peace while the other was at war, would be all on one side, to use an expression of Mr. Pitt, where America could immediately enter on the freighting of enemy's goods. The American government was too candid to turn a deaf ear to such an argument as this; and it will be found in the 12th Article of the treaty before cited, that the parties agreed to resume the discussion, after a peace should have placed them on an equal footing.

But, Sir, is the inference to be drawn from this, that Ame rica supports France in her pretensions? On the contrary I do say that the more desirous she is of establishing the rule; the more numerous the instances in which the practice has been heretofore admitted; and the greater the number of states that maintain the doctrine as a principle; the less right have we to say that America is hostile to our pretensions, and the more reason to aver the contrary.

Now let us probe the depth of our gratitude to America for siding with us against all the world in this pretension, and against France at least in the others that we consider of such vital importance; or to get rid of the irony at once, let us review a few of the miserable state tricks, by which the public opinion has been forced into a direction so adverse to this palpable evidence. I think, Sir, you will agree with me that this self-denial of the American government is not to be construed into resistance to our pretensions; and that the expression of a desire, thus curbed, by the editor of a newspaper even favorite of the government, is not to

be viewed in that light. I know it is the fashion to consider whatever is announced in certain public prints as having the sanction of the government; but I know also that it is the case in America, (as Lord Whitworth told Buonaparte it was here,) that if certain papers are favored with an early communication of what the government sees fit to publish, the editors are not therefore restrained from inserting their own opinions, or any articles that may be sent them by others; and indeed I have seen instances in the National Intelligencer, or some extracts from it in our own papers, of regret, in the very question of hostility with us, that the government was not disposed to go the length the writers wished. Neither shall we confine ourselves to the efforts of the scribblers in our own government prints, to show how much the converse of the true case has been held up to view; though here we should find a miserable “if” of Buonaparte's converted into an alliance, and his assertion that America would meet on his side in a congress for peace (which on every other occasion would be taken for evidence of the contrary) set down for gospel.

Undoubtedly the more dignified course for both governments would be to discourage the holding out such false lights, where they can be supposed to emanate from themselves. But in the case before us, we shall show higher evidence of perverseness than in the vulgar lies of the Times.

Whoever will give himself the trouble to read the declaration of government of the twenty-first of April, 1812, will find that an official report of the French Minister for foreign affairs to the Conservative Senate of the tenth of March preceding, which has no reference whatever to America, but which relates "to Europe only and the Continent of Europe, and the Continental System, and the continental ports, which are mentioned thrice three times in the instrument, without a word of America, or a word that can be applied to her:" that this instrument, I say, is not only so tortuously twisted, as to lead the reader to believe that America is contemplated in it; but that, as it were to rivet the deception, a hope is expressed that when this act shall be made known in America, the United States will be thereby induced to change their

measures.

I am confident, Sir, that nine people out of ten, I might per