bestowed with a lavish hand all the capaci ties for future legitimate greatness, they indulge no thirst for conquest, no ambition for the extension of their limits. Encircled by no dangerous powers, they neither fear nor are jealous of their neighbors, and are not, on that account, obliged to arm for their own safety. Separated far from Europe by a vast and friendly ocean, they are but remotely, if at all, affected by those interests which agitate and influence this portion of the world. Thus circumstanced they have no motives for voluntary war. . . . Having avowed this determination, in creased motives of honor and of duty com manded its faithful observance. It is not a principle which remains now to be settled, that a fraudulent neutrality is no neutrality at all, and that the nation which would be admitted to its privileges, must perform also the duties it enjoins. Had the government of the United States, declaring itself neutral, indulged its partialities by granting favors, unstipulated by treaty, to one of the bellig erent powers which it refused to another, it could no longer have claimed the immun ities of a situation of which the obligations were forgotten; it would have become a party to the war as certainly as if war had been openly and formally declared; and it would have added to the madness of wan tonly engaging in such a hazardous conflict, the dishonor of insincere and fraudulent conduct. "... At this period, top, a great principle was brought into discussion, the dispassion ate consideration of which is essential to the fair estimate of the charges made by France against the government of the United States. The property of French citizens was taken by British cruisers and ships of war out of American bottoms, and the American government submitted to the practice. The propriety of submitting to it depends entirely on the naked right of the captors, under the existing circum stances of the case, to exercise such a power.
The circumstances were these : In the treaty of commerce made between France and the United States in February, 1778, it was stipulated in substance that neither party should take out of the vessels of the other the goods of its enemy, but that the char acter of the bottom should be imparted to its cargo. With England the United States had made no stipulation on the subject. It follows that the rights of England, being neither diminished or increased by compact remained precisely in their natural state, and were to be ascertained by some pre existing acknowledged principle. This prin ciple is to be searched for in the law of nations. That law forms, independent of compact, a rule of action, by which the sovereignties of the civilized world consent to be governed. It prescribes what one nation may do without giving just cause of war, and what in consequence another may and ought to permit without being con sidered as having sacrificed its honor, its dignity, or its independence. What then is the doctrine of the law of nations on this subject? Do rfeutral bottoms of right and independent of particular compact protect hostile goods? The question is to be con sidered on its mere right, uninfluenced by the wishes or the interests of a neutral or belligerent power. It is a general rule that war gives to a belligerent power a right to seize and confiscate the goods of his enemy. However humanity may deplore the appli cation of this principle, there is perhaps no one to which man has more universally as sented or in which jurists have more uni formly agreed. Its theory and its practice have unhappily been maintained in all ages. This right then may be exercised on the goods of an enemy wherever found, unless opposed by some superior right. It yields by common consent to the superior right of a neutral nation to protect, in virtue of its sovereignty, the goods of either of the belligerent powers found within its jurisdiction. But can this right of protection, ad
