University of Virginia Library

5883. NEUTRALITY, Sale of arms.—

The manufacture of arms is the occupation
and livelihood of some of our citizens; and
* * * it ought not to be expected that a
war among other nations should produce such
an internal derangement of the occupations of
a nation at peace, as the suppression of a
manufacture which is the support of some of
its citizens; but * * * if they should export
these arms to nations at war, they would
be abandoned to the seizure and confiscation
which the law of nations authorized to be made
of them on the high seas.—
To E. C. Genet. Washington ed. iv, 87. Ford ed., vi, 460.
(Pa., Nov. 1793)
See Belligerents.