the United States, the Chesapeake, as long as the proclamation of the President of the 2d of July, 1807, shall be in force."

This demand, sir, might justly suggest the simple answer, that before the proclamation of the President could become a subject of consideration, satisfaction should be made for the acknowledged aggression which preceded it. This is evidently agreeable to the order of time, to the order of reason, and, it may be added, to the order of usage, as maintained by Great Britain, whenever in analogous cases, she has been the complaining party.

But as you have subjoined to the preliminary demand certain explanations, with a view doubtless to obviate such an answer, it will best accord with the candour of the President, to meet them with such a review of the whole subject, as will present the solid grounds on which he regards such a demand as inadmissible.

I begin with the occurrences from which the proclamation of July 2d resulted. These are in general terms referred to by the instrument itself. A more particular notice of the most important of them will here be in place.

Passing over, then, the habitual but minor irregularities of his Britannick majesty's ships of war, in making the hospitalities of our ports subservient to the annoyance of our trade, both outward and inward, a practice not only contrary to the principles of publick law, but expressly contrary to British ordinances enforced during maritime wars, to which she bore a neutral relation, I am constrained, unwelcome as the task is, to call your attention to the following more prominent instances.

In the summer of the year 1804, the British frigate the Cambrian, with other cruisers in company, entered the harbour of New York. The commander, captain Bradley, in violation of the port laws, relating both to health and revenue, caused a merchant vessel, just arrived, and confessedly within the limits and under the authority of the United States, to be boarded by persons under his command, who, after resisting the officers of the port, in the legal exercise of their functions, actually impressed and carried off a number of seamen and passengers into the service of the ships of war. On an appeal to his voluntary respect for the laws, he first failed to give up the offender

to justice, and finally repelled the officer charged with the regular process for the purpose.

This procedure was not only a flagrant insult to the sovereignty of the nation, but an infraction of its neutrality also, which did not permit a belligerent ship thus to augment its force within the neutral territory.

To finish the scene, this commander went so far as to declare, in an official letter, to the minister plenipotentiary of his Britannick majesty, and by him communicated to this government, that he considered his ship, whilst lying in the harbour of New York, as having dominion around her, within the distance of her buoys.

All these circumstances were duly made known to the British government, in just expectation of honourable reparation. None has ever been offered. Captain Bradley was advanced from his frigate to the command of a ship of the line.

At a subsequent period, several British frigates, under the command of captain Whitby, of the Leander, pursuing the practice of vexing the inward and outward trade of our ports, and hovering for that purpose about the entrance of that of New York, closed a series of irregularities with an attempt to arrest a coasting vessel, on board of which an American citizen was killed by a cannon ball, which entered the vessel, whilst within less than a mile from the shore.

The blood of a citizen thus murdered, in a trade from one to another port of his own country, and within the sanctuary of its territorial jurisdiction, could not fail to arouse the sensibility of the publick, and to make a solemn appeal to the justice of the British government. The case was presented moreover to that government by this, in the accent which it required; and with due confidence that the offender would receive the exemplary punishment which he deserved. That there might be no failure of legal proof of a fact sufficiently notorious of itself, unexceptionable witnesses to establish it were sent to Great Britain at the expense of the United States.

Captain Whitby was, notwithstanding, honourably acquitted; no animadversion took place on any other officer belonging to the squadron; nor has any apology or explanation been made since the trial was over, as a conciliatory offering to the disappointment of this country at such a result.

A case of another character occurred in the month of September, 1806. The Impetueux, a French ship of seventy-four guns, when aground within a few hundred yards of the shore of North Carolina, and therefore visibly within the territorial jurisdiction and hospitable protection of the United States, was fired upon, boarded and burnt, from three British ships of war, under the command of captain Douglass. Having completed this outrage on the sovereignty and neutrality of the United States, the British commander felt no scruple in proceeding thence into the waters near Norfolk; nor in the midst of the hospitalities enjoyed by him, to add to what had passed a refusal to discharge from his ships impressed citizens of the United States, not denied to be such, on the plea, that the government of the United States had refused to surrender to the demand of admiral Berkeley certain seamen alleged to be British deserters; a demand which, it is well understood, your government disclaims any right to make.

It would be very superfluous to dwell on the features which mark this aggravated insult. But I must be permitted to remind you, that in so serious a light was a similar violation of neutral territory, by the destruction of certain French ships on the coast of Portugal, by a British squadron under the command of admiral Boscawen, regarded by the court of Great Britain, that a minister extraordinary was despatched for the express purpose of expiating the aggression on the sovereignty of a friendly

power.

Lastly presents itself the attack by the British ship of war Leopard, on the American frigate Chesapeake, a case too familiar in all its circumstances to need a recital of any part of them. It is sufficient to remark, that the conclu-. sive evidence, which this event added to that which had preceded, of the uncontrolled excesses of the British naval commanders, in insulting our sovereignty and abusing our hospitality, determined the President to extend to all British armed ships the precaution heretofore applied to a few by name, of interdicting to them the use and privileges of our harbours and waters.

This was done by his proclamation of July 2, 1807, referring to the series of occurrences, ending with the aggression on the frigate Chesapeake, as the considerations requiring it. And if the apprehension from the licentious

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spirit of the British naval commanders, thus developed and uncontrolled, which led to this measure of precaution, could need other justification than was afforded by what had passed, it would be amply found in the subsequent conduct of the ships under the command of the same captain Douglass.

This officer, neither admonished by reflections on the crisis produced by the attack on the Chesapeake, nor controlled by respect for the law of nations, or the laws of the land, did not cease within our waters to bring to, by firing at, vessels pursuing their regular course of trade; and in the same spirit which had displayed itself in the recent outrage committed on the American frigate, he not only indulged himself in hostile threats, and in indications of a hostile approach to Norfolk, but actually obstructed our citizens in the ordinary communication between that and neighbouring places. His proceedings constituted, in fact, a blockade of the port, and as real an invasion of the country, according to the extent of his force, as if troops had been debarked, and the town besieged on the land side.

Was it possible for the chief magistrate of a nation, who felt for its rights and its honour, to do less than interpose some measure of precaution at least against the repetition of enormities, which had been so long uncontrolled by the government whose officers had committed them, and which had at last taken the exorbitant shape of hostility and of insult, seen in the attack on the frigate Chesapeake? Candour will pronounce that less could not be done; and it will as readily admit that the proclamation, comprising that measure, could not have breathed a more temperate spirit, nor spoken in a more becoming tone. How far it has received from those, whose intrusions it prohibited, the respect due to the national authority, or been made the occasion of new indignities, needs no explanation.

The President, having interposed this precautionary interdict, lost no time in instructing the minister plenipotentiary of the United States to represent to the British government the signal aggression which had been committed on their sovereignty and their flag, and to require the satisfaction due for it; indulging the expectation, that his Britannick majesty would at once perceive it to be the

truest magnanimity, as well as the strictest justice, to offer that prompt and full expiation of an acknowledged wrong, which would re-establish and improve, both in fact and in feeling, the state of things which it had violated.

This expectation was considered as not only honourable to the sentiments of his majesty, but was supported by known examples, in which, being the complaining party, he had required and obtained, as a preliminary to any counter complaints whatever, a precise replacement of things, in every practicable circumstance, in their pre-existing situation.

Thus, in the year 1764, Bermudians and other British subjects, who had, according to annual custom, taken possession of Turk's island for the season of making salt, having been forcibly removed with their vessels and effects by a French detachment from the island of St. Domingo, to which Turk's island was alleged to be an appurtenance, the British ambassador at Paris, in pursuance of instructions from his government, demanded, as a satisfaction for the violence committed, that the proceedings should be disavowed, the intention of acquiring Turk's island disclaimed, orders given for the immediate abandonment of it on the part of the French, every thing restored to the condition in which it was at the time of the aggression, and reparation made of the damages which any British subjects should be found to have sustained, according to an estimation to be settled between the governours of St. Domingo and Jamaica. A compliance with the whole of

this demand was the result.

Again :-In the year 1789, certain English merchants having opened a trade at Nootka sound, on the north west coast of America, and attempted a settlement at that place, the Spaniards, who had long claimed that part of the world as their exclusive property, despatched a frigate from Mexico, which captured the two English vessels engaged in the trade, and broke up the settlement on the coast. The Spanish government was the first to complain, in this case, of the intrusions committed by the British merchants. The British government, however, demanded that the vessels taken by the Spanish frigate should be restored, and adequate satisfaction granted, previous to any other discussion.