and we have little doubt, that France will ultimately yield to the firmness and steadiness, with which this demand will be maintained. Occasional allusions have been made to this matter from the date of the extract of M. de Villele's letter to the present time, but no impression has been made on the French government. We shall close this account by reciting a passage from one of the last letters of Mr. Gallatin, which contains all the information to be afforded in relation to it.

"I have special powers to negotiate a convention, providing for the just claims of citizens of the United States against France, as also for the like claims of French subjects against the United States, with such person or persons, as may have a like authority from his most Christian Majesty.

"As minister of the United States, I am authorized to discuss the question, respecting the construction of the 8th article of the Louisiana treaty, and to give and receive explanations on that subject. But the negotiation on that point, having been transferred to Washington, no special powers in that respect have been transmitted to me. I had understood in the course of the conference, I had the honour to have with your excellency on the 23d of September, and had accordingly written to my government, that it was not intended to insist, that that subject should be blended with that of private claims. It is, indeed, obvious that it would be utterly unjust to make the admission of these to depend on the result of a negotiation on a subject, with which they have no connexion whatever, and the difficulties, respecting which, are of a date, posterior to that of the claims.

"All the representations, which his majesty's government has made to that of the United States, whether on private or on public subjects, have uniformly been taken into consideration and received that attention, to which they were so justly entitled. In no instance has the government of the United States declined to open a discussion on any subject thus offered to their consideration by France, or made it a preliminary condition, that the discussion should, also, embrace some other subject, in which they might happen to take a greater interest. The question, respecting the 8th article of the Louisiana treaty, has in particular been the sub

ject of a voluminous correspondence in the course of which the arguments in support of the construction, insisted on by each party respectively, were made known to the other. I have, in the mean while, for six years made unceasing applications to his majesty's government for the settlement of claims to a vast amount, affecting the interest of numerous individuals, and arising from flagrant violations of the law of nations and of the rights of the United States, without having ever been able to obtain to this day satisfaction in a single instance, or even that the subject should be taken into consideration and discussed. After so many vexatious delays, for which different causes have at different times been assigned, it cannot now be intended again to postpone the investigation of that subject by insisting that it should be treated in connexion with one foreign to it, and which has already been discussed. The United States have, at least, the right to ask, that their demands should, also, be examined and discussed, and, I trust, that since I am authorized to treat, as well concerning the claims of French subjects against the United States, as respecting those of American citizens against France, a distinct negotiation to that effect will be opened without any further delay."

NAPLES.

This country has claims on the government of Naples of similar character and resting on the same foundation, with those, of which an account has just been given. William Pinkney of Baltimore, appointed, in the spring of 1816, minister to Russia, was furnished with a similar commission and a letter of credence to Naples, and with instructions to present the American claims. He arrived there in August of the same year in the Washington line of battle ship, and having remained in that capital a few weeks, went into a brief discussion of the subject, which is ably stated in his letter of August 24, 1816, to the Marquess di Circello, minister of state.

"The undersigned is sure, that the appeal, which he is about to make to the well known justice of his Sicilian majesty in the

name and by the orders of his government, will receive a deliberate and candid consideration; and that if it shall appear, as he trusts it will, to be recommended by those principles, which it is the interest as well as the duty of all governments to observe and maintain, the claim, involved in it, will be admitted effectually and promptly." "It cannot but be known to his excellency the Marquess di Circello, that, on the 1st July 1809, the minister for foreign affairs of the then government of Naples addressed to Frederick Degan, Esq. then consul of the United States, an official letter, containing an invitation to all American vessels, having on board the usual certificates of origin and other regular papers, to come direct to Naples with their cargoes; and that the same minister caused that invitation to be published in every possible mode, in order that it might come to the knowledge of those, whom it concerned. It will not be questioned, that the promise of security, necessarily implied in this measure, had every title in the actual circumstances of Europe to the confidence of distant and peaceable merchants. The merchants of America, as was to have been expected, did confide upon the credit and under the protection of that promise they sent to Naples many valuable vessels and cargoes, navigated and documented with scrupulous regularity, and in no respect obnoxious to molestation; but scarcely had they reached the destination, to which they had been allured, when they were seized without distinction as prize, or as otherwise forfeited to the Neapolitan government upon pretexts, the most frivolous and idle. These arbitrary seizures were followed with a rapacious haste by summary decrees, confiscating, in the name and for the use of the same government, the whole of the property, which had thus been brought within its grasp, and these decrees, which wanted even the decent affectation of justice, were immediately carried into execution against all the remonstrances of those, whom they oppressed, to enrich the treasury of the state."

;

"The right of the innocent victims of this unequalled act of fraud and rapine to demand retribution cannot be doubted. The only question is, from whom are they entitled to demand it? Those, who at that moment ruled in Naples, and were, in fact and in the view of the world, the government of Naples, have passed away before retribution could be obtained, although not before it was required, and if the right to retribution regards only the per

sons of those rulers, as private and ordinary wrong doers, the American merchant, whom they deluded and despoiled in the garb and with the instruments and for the purposes of sovereignty, must despair, forever, of redress."

"The general principle, that a civil society may contract obligations through its actual government, whatever that may be, and that it is not absolved from them by reason, simply, of a change of government or of rulers, is universally received as incontrovertible. It is admitted, not merely by writers on public law as a speculative truth, but by states and statesmen as a practical rule, and accordingly history is full of examples to prove, that the undisturbed possessor of sovereign power in any society, whether a rightful possessor or not, with reference to other claimants of that power, may not only be the lawful object of allegiance, but, by many of its acts in quality of sovereign de facto, may bind the society and those, who come after him, as rulers, although their title be adverse to, or even better than his own. The Marquess di Circello does not need to be informed, that the earlier annals of England in particular abound in instruction upon this head.

"With regard to just and beneficial contracts, entered into by such a sovereign with the merchants of foreign nations, or (which is the same thing) with regard to the detention and confiscation of their property for public uses, and by his authority in direct violation of a pledge of safety, upon the faith of which, that property arrived within the reach of confiscation, this continuing responsibility stands upon the plainest foundation of natural equity.

"It will not be pretended, that a merchant is called upon to investigate, as he prosecutes his traffic, the title of every sovereign, with whose ports and under the guaranty of whose plighted word he trades. He is rarely competent. There are few in any station, who are competent to an investigation, so full of delicacy, so perplexed with facts and principles of a peculiar character, far removed from the common concerns of life. His predicament would be, to the last degree, calamitous if, in an honest search after commercial profit he might not take governments, as he finds them, and consequently rely at all times upon the visible, exclusive, acknowledged possession of supreme authority. If he sees all the usual indications of established rule, all the distinguishing concomitants of real, undisputed power, it cannot be, that it can

be his duty to discuss mysterious theories above his capacity, or foreign to his pursuits, and, moreover, to connect the results of those speculations with events, of which his knowledge is either imperfect, or erroneous. If he sees the obedience of the people and the acquiescence of neighbouring princes, it is impossible, that it can be his duty to examine before he ships his merchandise, whether it be fit, these should acquiesce, or those obey. If, in short, he finds nothing to interfere with or qualify the dominion, which the head of the society exercises over it and the domain which it occupies, it is the dictate of reason, sanctioned by all experience, that he is bound to look no further.

"It can be of no importance to him that, notwithstanding all these appearances, announcing lawful rule, the mere right to fill the throne is claimed by, or, even, resides in another than the actual occupant. The latent right, (supposing it to exist) disjointed from and controverted by the fact, is to him nothing, while it continues to be latent. It is the sovereign only in possession, that it is in his power to know. It is with him only that he can enter into engagements. It is through him only that he can deal with the society. And if it be true, that the sovereign in possession is incapable, on account of a conflict of title between him and another, who barely claims, but makes no effort to assert his claim, of pledging the public faith of the society and of the monarch to foreign traders for commercial and other objects, we are driven to the monstrous conclusion, that the society is, in effect and indefinitely, cut off from all communication with the rest of the world. It has and can have no organ, by which it can become accountable to, or make any contract with foreigners, by which needful supplies may be invited into its harbours, by which famine may be averted or redundant productions be made to find a market in the wants of strangers. It is, in a word, an outcast from the great community of nations, at the very moment, too, when its existence in the form, which it has assumed, may every where be admitted. And, even, if the dormant claim to the throne should, at last, by a fortunate coincidence of circumstances become triumphant and unite itself to the possession, this harsh and palsying theory has no assurance to give either to the society, or to those who may incline to deal with it, that its moral capacity is restored, that it is an outcast no longer, and that it may now, through the protecting