mitted, took possession of the public mind of America, and this feeling, it was well known, coöperated with other causes to produce the state of hostilities which ensued.

At different periods, both before and since the war, negotiations had taken place between the two governments, with the hope of finding some means of quieting these complaints. Sometimes the effectual abolition of the practice had been requested and treated of; at other times, its temporary suspension; and, at other times, again, the limitation of its exercise and some security against its enormous abuses.

A common destiny had attended these efforts: they had all failed. The question stood at that moment where it stood fifty years ago. The nearest approach to a settlement was a convention, proposed in 1803, and which had come to the point of sig nature, when it was broken off in consequence of the British government insisting that the "Narrow Seas" should be expressly excepted out of the sphere over which the contemplated stipulations against impressment should extend. The American minister, Mr. King, regarded this exception as quite inadmissible, and chose rather to abandon the negotiation than to acquiesce in the doctrine which it proposed to establish.

England asserted the right of impressing British subjects. She asserted this as a legal exercise of the prerogative of the crown; which prerogative was alleged to be founded on the English law of the perpetual and indissoluble allegiance of the subject, and his obligation, under all circumstances, and for his whole life, to render military service to the crown whenever required.

This statement, made in the words of eminent British jurists, showed at once that the English claim was far broader than the basis on which it was raised. The law relied on was English law; the obligations insisted on were obligations between the crown of England and its subjects. This law and these obligations, it was admitted, might be such as England chose they should be. But then they must be confined to the parties. Impressment of seamen, out of and beyond the English territory, and from on board the ships of other nations, was an interference with the rights of other nations; it went, therefore, further than English prerogative could legally extend; and was nothing, but an attempt to enforce the peculiar law of England beyond the dominions and jurisdiction of the crown. The claim asserted an

extra-territorial authority for the law of British prerogative, and assumed to exercise this extra-territorial authority, to the manifest injury of the citizens and subjects of other States, on board their own vessels, on the high seas.

Every merchant vessel on those seas was rightfully considered as part of the territory of the country to which it belonged. The entry, therefore, into such vessel, by a belligerent power, was an act of force, and was, primâ facie, a wrong, a trespass which could be justified only when done for some purpose allowed to form a sufficient justification by the law of nations. But a British cruiser enters an American vessel in order to take therefrom supposed British subjects; offering no justification therefor under the law of nations, but claiming the right under the law of England respecting the king's prerogative. This could not be defended. English soil, English territory, English jurisdiction, was the appropriate sphere for the operation of English law. The ocean was the sphere of the law of nations; and any merchant vessel on the high seas was, by that law, under the protection of the laws of her own nation, and might claim immunity, unless in cases in which that law allows her to be entered or visited.

If this notion of perpetual allegiance, and the consequent power of the prerogative, were the law of the world; if it formed part of the conventional code of nations, and was usually practised, like the right of visiting neutral ships, for the purpose of discovering and seizing enemy's property; then impressment might be defended as a common right, and there would be no remedy for the evil until the international code should be altered. But this was by no means the case. There was no such principle incorporated into the code of nations. The doctrine stood only as English law, not as international law; and English law could not be of force beyond English dominion. Whatever duties or relations that law creates between the sovereign and his subjects, could only be enforced within the realm, or within the proper possessions or territory of the sovereign. There might be quite as just a prerogative right to the property of subjects as to their personal services, in an exigency of the State; but no government thought of controlling, by its own laws, the property of its subjects situated abroad; much less did any government think of entering the territory of another power, for the purpose of seizing such property and

appropriating it to its own use. As laws, the prerogatives of the crown of England have no obligation on persons or property domiciled or situated abroad.

"When, therefore," says an authority not unknown or unregarded on either side of the Atlantic, "we speak of the right of a State to bind its own native subjects everywhere, we speak only of its own claim and exercise of sovereignty over them, when they return within its own territorial jurisdiction, and not of its right to compel or require obedience to such laws on the part of other nations, within their own territorial sovereignty. On the contrary, every nation has an exclusive right to regulate persons and things within its own territory, according to its sovereign will and public polity."

But impressment was subject to objections of a much wider range. If it could be justified in its application to those who are declared to be its only objects, it still remained true that, in its exercise, it touched the political rights of other governments, and endangered the security of their own native subjects and citizens. The sovereignty of the State was concerned in maintaining its exclusive jurisdiction and possession over its merchant ships on the seas, except so far as the law of nations justifies intrusion upon that possession for special purposes; and all experience had shown that no member of a crew, wherever born, was safe against impressment when a ship was visited.

In the calm and quiet which had succeeded the late war, a condition so favorable for dispassionate consideration, England herself had evidently seen the harshness of impressment, even when exercised on seamen in her own merchant service; and she had adopted measures, calculated if not to renounce the power or to abolish the practice, yet, at least, to supersede its necessity, by other means of manning the royal navy, more compatible with justice and the rights of individuals, and far more conformable to the principles and sentiments of the age.

Under these circumstances, the government of the United States had used the occasion of the British minister's pacific mission to review the whole subject, and to bring it to his notice and to that of his government. It had reflected on the past, pondered the condition of the present, and endeavored to anticipate, so far as it might be in its power, the probable future; and the

American negotiator communicated to the British minister the following, as the result of those deliberations.

The American government, then, was prepared to say that the practice of impressing seamen from American vessels could not hereafter be allowed to take place. That practice was founded on principles which it did not recognize, and was invariably attended by consequences so unjust, so injurious, and of such formidable magnitude, as could not be submitted to.

In the early disputes between the two governments, on this so long contested topic, the distinguished person to whose hands were first intrusted the seals of the Department of State declared, that "the simplest rule will be, that the vessel being American shall be evidence that the seamen on board are such."

Fifty years' experience, the utter failure of many negotiations, and a careful reconsideration of the whole subject when the passions were laid, and no present interest or emergency existed to bias the judgment, had convinced the American government that this was not only the simplest and best, but the only rule, which could be adopted and observed, consistently with the rights and honor of the United States, and the security of their citizens. That rule announced, therefore, what would hereafter be the principle maintained by their government. In every regularly documented American merchant vessel, the crew who navigated it would find their protection in the flag which was over them.1 (a)

1 Wheaton's Hist. Law of Nations, pp. 737-746. Mr. Webster's Letter to Lord Ashburton, August 8, 1842.

(a) [In the negotiations of 1823, the American Minister was authorized, if Great Britain would agree to abolish impressment, to stipulate to exclude all natural-born subjects of the belligerent party not naturalized before the commencement of a war, from the public and private naval service of the neutral, and even to extend the exclusion to all those naturalized after the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty. Mr. Adams, Secretary of State, to Mr. Rush, July 28, 1823. Cong. Doc. 18 Cong. 2 Sess., Senate, Confidential, p. 54.

Similar instructions had been given to the Commissioners at Ghent, and, with the express view of meeting the case, the 12th section of the Act of 3d March, 1813, (U. S. Stat. at Large, vol. ii. p. 811,) "for the regulation of seamen on board the public and private vessels of the United States," had provided that no person subsequently arriving in the United States should be admitted to

IV. The municipal laws and institutions of any 11. Consular jurisState may operate beyond its own territory, and within diction. the territory of another State, by special compact between the two States.

Such are the treaties by which the consuls and other commercial agents of one nation are authorized to exercise, over their own countrymen, a jurisdiction within the territory of the State

become a citizen who should not, for the continued term of five years next preceding his admission, have resided in the United States, without being, at any time during the said five years, out of the territory of the United States. Looking to the habits of life of seamen, this provision was deemed entirely equivalent to the total prohibition of their naturalization, and was intended to meet the suggestions made during the negotiations of 1806, between Lord Holland and Lord Aukland and Mr. Monroe and Mr. Pinkney—when it was proposed that it should be made penal for British commanders to impress American citizens from on board of American vessels on the high seas, and for officers of the United States to grant certificates of citizenship to British subjects. American State Papers, vol. vi. p. 323. This arrangement was again brought forward, at the time of the proposed armistice, at the commencement of the war, by Mr. Russell, in a conference with Lord Castlereagh, when the entire exclusion of all subsequently naturalized citizens was offered by us, as a consideration for the discontinuance of the practice of impressment. Id. vol. ix. p. 147.

Impressment was also one of the numerous subjects confided to Mr. Gallatin, in 1826. In consequence, however, of what had previously occurred, that eminent diplomatist, though authorized to receive and discuss, was not permitted to make any new proposals; and he found that, " though Mr. Canning (who was then Premier) was, as Lord Castlereagh had been, ahead of public opinion or national pride, he did not feel himself quite strong enough to encounter those sentiments, and to give new arms to his adversaries; and notwithstanding his conviction that an agreement, such as he might expect, was extremely desirable, he was not prepared, at that time, to make the proposal." Mr. Gallatin to Mr. Clay, Secretary of State, 28th July, 1827. After the departure of Mr. Gallatin, an intimation was given, by Lord Dudley, of the disposition of the Ministry, of which the Duke of Wellington had then become the head, to enter into an arrangement on the basis, on which it was understood that the United States were willing to treat. This suggestion of the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs was duly communicated to the government, at Washington, though without resulting in any new negotiation. Mr. Lawrence, Chargé d'Affaires, to Mr. Clay, April 5, 1828. MS. Despatches. But, though not brought again to the notice of the British government, the provision of the Act of 1813, which was equivalent to a practical prohibition to naturalize foreign seamen, remained on our statute-book as a means to conciliate the pretensions of England with the immunity of our flag, till the 26th of June, 1848, when the condition of continuous residence was stricken out of the law. U. S. Stat. at Large, vol. ix. p. 240.]