residence under record, with certificate of good character and the like a process much more tedious than we observe in any case. And for men so naturalized, the American government require nothing more than we have pledged ourselves to give, and have given, and do give every day, disguise it how we may, to scores of thousands of foreign seamen in our service.

But I must say I see nothing in what we have done or in what the American government has done, to reconcile me to the practice. We have excluded ourselves from the right of finding fault with them; but it is only by having previously adopted a practice that will not bear the test of first principles, to which we ought to resort; and although certainly it would be very complaisant in any nation to allow us to retrace our steps at the particular moment when the rule we had laid down subserves her interest; yet if we find the practice in the abstract repugnant to nature, as well as incompatible with those principles on which the harmony of society depends; I should hope a prospective adjustment of the question might be so arranged as to remove the obstacle to peace. There is fortunately a sufficient anomaly in the relative situation of the two countries to do away the repugnance that might attend a compromise by either with any other nation. Some measures have been adopted by special compact in the question arising from certain natives of the one country being the natural heirs of those of the other. And in this question of citizenship I do think the American government ought to be contented with the doctrine of Lord Kenyon in the case of Collett, that a subject may become a citizen of another country for the purposes of commerce, but not for the purposes of war. That a foreign merchant should be admitted to citizenship is consonant with many regulations of "the ancient law of this realm:"-there is nothing repugnant to nature in this:indeed it is in the very nature of commercial intercourse that such an interchange should occasionally take place :-it is a means of diffusing mutual benefits; whereas the admission of a foreigner, who may on the first occasion turn his arms against his native land, is quite pestiferous. Suppose a man reeking with revenge for punishment justly inflicted on him by the laws of his country, or even for injuries that he has sustained, or thinks he has sustained, wrongfully, to nestle himself into the bosom of a country at peace No. VIII. Pam. VOL. IV.

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with his own in which of these cases can it be desirable to adopt him as a citizen ?-that he was wronged as an individual, is not to be credited on his mere assertion. If he were persecuted for political offences, he must have had associates :-if his cause were just, he should stay at home and defend it; and not sneak away and leave others to suffer; while by withdrawing himself he diminished their powers of resistance. In no case should the nation he flies to, take any part in his quarrel, or suffer him to inflame any causes of complaint which she might have against his native country, and thereby add to the hazard of producing the flames of war, in a case in which a peaceable adjustment might otherwise be obtained.

If a line can be drawn that will reserve the point of honor, and so define the rights of naturalization, that each country will be left in the possession of a reasonable jurisdiction, I should hope the consideration that we have heretofore acted wrong in the case, would not be an impediment to such an adjustment. America cannot want our subjects; at least such subjects as we send her she may have thought with Queen Anne, that "the increase of people was a means of advancing the wealth and strength of a nation;" but it is no compliment to say that such as she has received from us, constitute no improvement of her own race. I doubt if there is a man in the country that would not compound to give up the best of them upon the simple condition that we should take the rest into the bargain; but they will not be debarred of the exercise of the rights of hospitality ad libitum. Merchants and ship-captains are glad to get sailors cheap; and to be cheap, they must be plentiful: but foreign sailors are no object to the United States in a national point of view they are not allowed to be on board their men of war, and we need not go out of our own to be satisfied that they can have none better than their own breed. Any navy officer will tell you, and would have told you before the war, that even those of them that were impressed, in defiance of the laws of God and man, were the best and most trustworthy of any seamen they had on board: and surely we can require no ghost to satisfy us that the ocean bears not braver men in battle ;-if we did, they have made ghosts enough, God knows. But we have living witnesses in abundance of the bravery and excellence of their conduct; who, to do them justice, are not parsimonious of their commendations, but uniform and profuse; (in spite of the fire-side warriors at home ;) as well

they may be, for not an instance has been recorded of their plucking out an eye from the head, or plunging a dagger into the heart, of any of the perpetrators of the double crime of robbery and murder by impressment, that have fallen into their power. And where they have sunk a cruiser, they have taken the tenderest care of the officers, as well as of the crew. We have done wisely indeed to turn them out of the men of war when we discovered that they were not invincible: but even those on board the Guerriere, that refused to fight, and sat with their arms folded on deck, while limbs and balls were flying about their heads, took no advantage of the event that brought their oppressors into their power. There is, indeed, a morality about the American seamen which is not to be found in that class of men in other countries, except a few of our own from the north, who have seen in the Cotter's saturday-night, a symptom of the same kind of education; still it is wonderful, with the opportunities they have had of avenging a wrong, which has its only parallel, if indeed it be a parallel, in the atrocious murder of the Duc d'Enghien, that no instance has been found of their stepping out of the line of discipline to do it; but that on every occasion their enmity has ceased with the lowering of our flag.

To return to the question of naturalization. It is important to observe that the best advocates for our rights over our own subjects are to be found in the Committee of Congress, appointed to report on the question; and the best hope for a disposition to accommodate on the part of the United States, in the law already passed, on the suggestion of Lord Castlereagh to Mr. Russell, (that the engagement of the executive government of the United States was not sufficient) whereby all the branches of that government have engaged to discontinue the naturalization of our seamen at the end of the present war.' I say it is important to make this observation; for though this law, passed the 3d of March, 1813, was duly promulgated in all the papers of the United States, and, I believe, tucked in small print into one of our own, it is as little known as our acknowledgment beforementioned, that the American Government had disavowed Buonaparte's principles of maritime law.

My next will take up the subject of the Henry Plot.

They cannot be naturalized during the war; as alien enemies are excepted in the American law of naturalization.

To be continued in our next.

Inder

TO VOLUMES III. AND IV.

The Roman figures indicate the Volume, and the Arabic, the page.