5836. NEUTRALITY, Enemy goods.—[continued].
It is to be lamented, indeed,
that the general principle has operated so
cruelly in the dreadful calamity which has lately
happened in St. Domingo. The miserable fugitives,
who, to save their lives, had taken asylum
in our vessels, with such valuable and portable
things as could be gathered in the moment out
of the ashes of their houses and wrecks of their
fortunes, have been plundered of these remains
by the licensed sea rovers of their enemies.
This has swelled, on this occasion, the disadvantages
of the general principle, that “an enemy's
goods are free prize in the vessels of a
friend”. But it is one of those deplorable and
unforeseen calamities to which they expose themselves
who enter into a state of war, furnishing
to us an awful lesson to avoid it by justice and
moderation, and not a cause of encouragement
to expose our own towns to the same burning
and butcheries, nor of complaint because we
do not.—
To Gouverneur Morris. Washington ed. iv, 44.
Ford ed., vi, 387.
(Pa.,
Aug. 1793)
See Enemy Goods.
