charged by the President of the United States to express to you his expectation, and at the same time his confidence, that you will be pleased to take immediate and effectual measures for having the ship Grange and her cargo restored to the British owners, and the persons taken on board her set at liberty.”[6] The general principle illustrated by this striking case has been maintained by our Government ever since. If any reader is curious to see an elaborate vindication of it, I refer him to a very animated article in the “Boston Gazette” for 1814, transferred to “Niles’s Register,”[7] where the inviolability of neutral territory is upheld, especially against the open pretensions of Great Britain.

This general principle may seem at first view conclusive with regard to the Florida. If this vessel, now lying within the jurisdiction of the United States, were an ordinary private ship, cognizable in a prize court, or if it were still within the jurisdiction of Brazil, it might be so. But it remains to be seen whether there are not decisive considerations, distinguishing this case from every other, which will justify our Government, while recognizing the violation of Brazilian territory, and making all proper apologies, at least in declining any restitution of the ship. On this point it is not necessary to express an opinion. I began by allusion to the reckless judgments of British journals, tending to excite a cry against our country; and my present object will be accomplished, if I exhibit those historic precedents which must close the British mouth, whenever it opens to condemn a capture like that of the Florida.

1. It was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth that England began to contest the supremacy of the seas; and it was in this same reign that this domineering power began those pretensions under which neutral rights of all kinds were set at nought. As early as 1567, Hawkins, fresh from a slave-trading voyage in the ship “Jesus,” fired at a Spanish ship in the harbor of Plymouth, and forced her to lower her flag. The Spanish ambassador said indignantly to Elizabeth: “Your mariners rob my master’s subjects on the sea; they plunder our people in the streets of your towns; they attack our vessels in your very harbors. I entreat your Majesty to punish this last outrage at Plymouth, and to preserve the peace between the two nations.”[8] Elizabeth gave a smooth answer, and that was all.

2. Not long afterwards Admiral Drake entered the harbor of Cadiz, where he scattered, sunk, and burned an immense fleet of Spanish transports, and then did the same thing in the harbor of Lisbon. There were apologies on the part of Elizabeth; Burleigh wrote a crafty letter; the Admiral was disavowed; but this was all.[9] Among the ships seized at Lisbon were no less than sixty belonging to the Hanse Towns. These towns vainly demanded their restitution. Philip of Spain, at that time sovereign of Portugal, was equally unsuccessful, although, by way of retaliation, he drove from Lisbon the factors of the Company of English Merchants.[10]

Such are some of the earliest historic precedents.

3. In similar defiance of unquestionable right, the Dutch East India fleet, in 1665, which had put into Bergen in Norway, was attacked by the English in this neutral port. On this outrage Vattel remarks: “But the Governor of Bergen fired on the assailants, and the Court of Denmark complained, perhaps too faintly, of an enterprise so injurious to its dignity and its rights.”[11]

4. Throughout the seventeenth century numerous incidents illustrate the pretensions of Great Britain; and so also in the next century. Émérigon, the famous French authority on the Law of Insurance, mentions one which deserves notice. In 1757, a French bark, La Victoire, chased by a British privateer, sought refuge in the neutral waters of Majorca, where she anchored within pistol-shot of the shore. The British privateer seized the bark, notwithstanding three shots fired from the castle. A few days later the prize was recaptured by a French privateer. The original owners of the bark claimed her, on the ground that her capture was null; but the court of prizes awarded one third to the recaptor.[12] The learned author fails to record any reparation by Great Britain.

Advancing to later times, the historic precedents multiply. I pass over a considerable period, not without examples, and come at once to those occurring in the protracted war against the French Revolution.

5. War had hardly begun, when, in 1793, the port of Genoa was the scene of an incident differing from that in Bahia only in its very aggravating circumstances, and in the bloodshed that ensued. The French frigate La Modeste was quietly at anchor in this neutral harbor when a British ship-of-the-line came alongside. Suddenly the British commander summoned the Frenchman to surrender. On his refusal, the frigate was boarded, and three hundred of the unarmed crew were massacred. The frigate was carried to England. Such is the account given by a French author, who complains bitterly that the British Government did nothing to punish the outrage. The Genoese Government was powerless; and the French Convention, in a decree marked by great moderation, proceeded to release it from all responsibility, although at a later day it appears to have paid two millions of francs as an indemnity.[13] The reader curious in dates will not fail to observe that it was in the very year when the neutrality of Genoa was thus set at defiance that the British minister in the United States claimed the surrender of a ship seized by a French frigate in defiance of our neutrality. Such are famous contradictions of national conduct. A British ship captured by France in neutral waters was surrendered at the demand of Great Britain; a French ship captured by Great Britain in neutral waters was hurried off by the captor as prize of war.

6. The same author who has described the outrage in the harbor of Genoa adds that Admiral Nelson afterwards carried off another French vessel in full view of the Genoese batteries.[14]

7. Another