5888. NEUTRALITY, Violations of.—
Since our last meeting the aspect of our foreign
relations has considerably changed. Our coasts
have been infested and our harbors watched by
private armed vessels, some of them without
commissions, some with illegal commissions,
others with those of legal form but committing
piratical acts beyond the authority of their
commissions. They have captured in the very
entrance of our harbors, as well as on the high
seas, not only the vessels of our friends coming
to trade with us, but our own also. They have
carried them off under pretence of legal adjudication,
but not daring to approach a court
of justice, they have plundered and sunk them
by the way, or in obscure places where no evidence
could arise against them; maltreated the
crews, and abandoned them in boats in the
open sea, or on desert shores without food or
covering. These enormities appearing to be
unreached by any control of their sovereigns,
I found it necessary to equip a force to cruise
within our own seas, to arrest all vessels of
these descriptions found hovering on our coast
within the limits of the Gulf Stream, and to
bring the offenders in for trial as pirates. The
same system of hovering on our coasts, and
harbors under color of seeking enemies, has
been also carried on by public armed ships,
to the great annoyance and oppression of our
commerce. New principles, too, have been interpolated
into the law of nations, founded
neither in justice, nor the usage, or acknowledgment
of nations. According to these, a
belligerent takes to itself a commerce with its
own enemy, which it denies to a neutral on the
ground of its aiding that enemy in the war.
But reason revolts at such an inconsistency;
and the neutral having equal right with the
belligerent to decide the question, the interest
of our constituents and the duty of maintaining
the authority of reason, the only umpire
between just nations, impose on us the obligation
of providing an effectual and determined
opposition to a doctrine so injurious to the
rights of peaceable nations. Indeed, the confidence
we ought to have in the justice of
others, still countenances the hope that a
sounder view of those rights will of itself induce
from every belligerent a more correct observance
of them.—
Fifth Annual Message. Washington ed. viii, 47.
Ford ed., viii, 389.
(Dec. 1805)
