For eighteen years after 1783 William Pitt guided England through peace
and war with authority almost as absolute as that of Don Carlos IV. or
Napoleon himself. From him and from his country President Jefferson
had much to fear and nothing to gain beyond a continuance of the good
relations which President Washington, with extreme difficulty, had
succeeded in establishing between the two peoples. So far as England
was concerned, this understanding had been the work of Pitt and Lord
Grenville, who rather imposed it on their party than accepted it as the
result of any public will. The extreme perils in which England then
stood inspired caution; and of this caution the treaty of 1794 was one
happy result. So long as the British government remained in a cautious
spirit, America was safe; but should Pitt or his successors throw off
the self-imposed restraints on England’s power, America could at the
utmost, even by a successful war, gain nothing materially better than a
return to the arrangements of 1794.
The War of Independence, which ended in the definitive treaty of 1783,
naturally left the English people in a state of irritation and disgust
toward America; and the long interregnum of the Confederation, from
1783 to 1789, allowed this disgust to ripen into contempt. When at
length the Constitution of 1789 restored order in the American chaos,
England felt little faith in the success of the experiment. She waited
for time to throw light on her interests.
This delay was natural; for American independence had shattered
into fragments the commercial system of Great Britain, and powerful
interests were combined to resist further concession. Before 1776 the
colonies of England stretched from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi,
and across the Gulf of Mexico to the coast of South America, mutually
supporting and strengthening each other. Jamaica and the other British
islands of the West Indies drew their most necessary supplies from the
Delaware and the Hudson. Boston and New York were in some respects
more important to them than London itself. The timber, live-stock, and
provisions which came from the neighboring continent were essential to
the existence of the West Indian planters and negroes. When war cut off
these supplies, famine and pestilence followed. After the peace of 1783
even the most conservative English statesmen were obliged to admit that
the strictness of their old colonial system could not be maintained,
and that the United States, though independent, must be admitted to
some of the privileges of a British colony. The government unwillingly
conceded what could not be refused, and the West Indian colonists
compelled Parliament to relax the colonial system so far as to allow
a restricted intercourse between their islands and the ports of the
United States. The relaxation was not a favor to the United States,--it
was a condition of existence to the West Indies; not a boon, but a
right which the colonists claimed and an Act of Parliament defined.[226]
The right was dearly paid for. The islands might buy American timber
and grain, but they were allowed to make return only in molasses and
rum. Payment in sugar would have been cheaper for the colonists, and
the planters wished for nothing more earnestly than to be allowed this
privilege; but as often as they raised the prayer, English shipowners
cried that the navigation laws were in peril, and a chorus of familiar
phrases filled the air, all carrying a deep meaning to the English
people. “Nursery of seamen” was one favorite expression; “Neutral
frauds” another; and all agreed in assuming that at whatever cost, and
by means however extravagant, the navy must be fed and strengthened.
Under the cover of supporting the navy any absurdity could be defended;
and in the case of the West Indian trade, the British shipowner enjoyed
the right to absurdities sanctioned by a century and a half of law and
custom. The freight on British sugars belonged of right to British
shippers, who could not be expected to surrender of their own accord,
in obedience to any laws of political economy, a property which was the
source of their incomes. The colonists asked permission to refine their
own sugar; but their request not only roused strong opposition from
the shipowners who wanted the bulkier freight, but started the home
sugar-refiners to their feet, who proved by Acts of Parliament that
sugar-refining was a British and not a colonial right. The colonist
then begged a reduction of the heavy duty on sugar; but English country
gentlemen cried against a measure which might lead to an increase of
the income-tax or the imposition of some new burden on agriculture. In
this dilemma the colonists frankly said that only their weakness, not
their will, prevented them from declaring themselves independent, like
their neighbors at Charleston and Philadelphia.
Even when the qualified right of trade was conceded, the colonists were
not satisfied; and the concession itself laid the foundation of more
serious changes. From the moment that American produce was admitted
to be a necessity for the colonists, it was clear that the Americans
must be allowed a voice in the British system. Discussion whether the
Americans had or had not a right to the colonial trade was already
a long step toward revolution. One British minister after another
resented the idea that the Americans had any rights in the matter;
yet when they came to practical arrangements the British statesmen
were obliged to concede that they were mistaken. From the necessity of
the case, the Americans had rights which never could be successfully
denied. Parliament struggled to prevent the rebel Americans from
sharing in the advantages of the colonial system from which they had
rebelled; but unreasonable as it was that the United States should be
rewarded for rebellion by retaining the privileges of subjects, this
was the inevitable result. Geography and Nature were stronger than
Parliament and the British navy.
At first Pitt hoped that the concession to the colonists might entail
no concession to the United States; while admitting a certain hiatus
in the colonial system, he tried to maintain the navigation laws in
their integrity. The admission of American produce into the West
Indies was no doubt an infraction of the protectionist principle on
which all the civilized world, except America, founded its economical
ideas; but in itself it was not serious. To allow the flour, potatoes,
tobacco, timber, and horses of the American continent to enter the
harbors of Barbadoes and Jamaica; to allow in turn the molasses and
rum of the islands to be sent directly to New York and Boston,--harmed
no one, and was advantageous to all parties, so long as British ships
were employed to carry on the trade. At first this was the case. The
Act of Parliament allowed only British subjects, in British-built
ships, to enter colonial ports with American produce. Whether the
United States government would long tolerate such legislation without
countervailing measures was a question which remained open for a time,
while the system itself had a chance to prove its own weakness. The
British shipping did not answer colonial objects. Again and again the
colonists found themselves on the verge of starvation; and always
in this emergency the colonial governors threw open their ports
by proclamation to American shipping, while with equal regularity
Parliament protected the governors by Acts of Indemnity. To this extent
the navigation system suffered together with the colonial system, but
in theory it was intact. Ministry, Parliament, and people clung to the
navigation laws as their ark of safety; and even the colonists conceded
that although they had a right to eat American wheat and potatoes,
they had no right to eat those which came to them in the hold of a
Marblehead schooner.
Such a principle, however convenient to Great Britain, was not suited
to the interests of New England shippers. In peace their chances were
comparatively few, and the chief diplomatic difficulties between
European governments and the United States had their source in the
American attempt to obtain legal recognition of trade which America
wished to maintain with the colonies; but in war the situation changed,
and more serious disputes occurred. Then the French and Spanish West
Indian ports were necessarily thrown open to neutral commerce, because
their own ships were driven from the ocean by the superiority of the
British navy. Besides the standing controversy about the admission
of American produce to British islands, the British government found
itself harassed by doubts to what extent it might safely admit the
Americans into the French or Spanish West Indies, and allow them to
carry French property, as though their flag were competent to protect
whatever was under it. Granting that an article like French sugar
might be carried in a neutral vessel, there were still other articles,
called contraband, which ought not to be made objects of neutral
commerce; and England was obliged to define the nature of contraband.
She was also forced to make free use of the right of blockade. These
delicate questions were embittered by another and more serious quarrel.
The European belligerents claimed the right to the military service of
their subjects, and there was no doubt that their right was perfect.
In pursuance of the claim they insisted upon taking their seamen from
American merchant-vessels wherever met on the high seas. So far as
France was concerned, the annoyance was slight; but the identity of
race made the practice extremely troublesome as concerned England.
At the outbreak of the French wars, Nov. 6, 1793, the British
government issued instructions directing all British armed vessels to
seize every neutral ship they should meet, loaded with the produce of
a French colony or carrying supplies for its use.[227] These orders
were kept secret for several weeks, until the whole American commerce
with the Antilles, and all American ships found on the ocean, laden in
whole or in part with articles of French colonial produce or for French
colonial use, were surprised and swept into British harbors, where they
were condemned by British admiralty courts, on the ground known as the
“Rule of the War of 1756,”--that because trade between the French
colonies and the United States was illegal in peace, it was illegal in
war. From the point of view in which European Powers regarded their
colonies, much could be said in support of this rule. A colony was
almost as much the property of its home government as a dockyard or a
military station. France and Spain could hardly complain if England
chose to treat the commerce of such governmentstations as contraband;
but a rule which might perhaps be applied by European governments to
each other worked with great injustice when applied to the United
States, who had no colonies, and made no attempt to build up a navy
or support an army by such means. Taken in its broadest sense, the
European colonial system might be defined by the description which the
best of British commentators gave to that of England,[228]--a “policy
pursued for rendering the foreign trade of the whole world subservient
to the increase of her shipping and navigation.” American Independence
was a protest against this practice; and the first great task of the
United States was to overthrow and destroy the principle, in order to
substitute freedom of trade. America naturally objected to becoming a
martyr to the rules of a system which she was trying to revolutionize.
When these British instructions of Nov. 26, 1793, became known in
the United States, the Government of President Washington imposed an
embargo, threatened retaliation, and sent Chief-Justice Jay to London
as a last chance of maintaining peace. On arriving there, Jay found
that Pitt had already voluntarily retreated from his ground, and that
new Orders, dated Jan. 8, 1794, had been issued, exempting from seizure
American vessels engaged in the direct trade from the United States to
the French West Indies. In the end, the British government paid the
value of the confiscated vessels. The trade from the United States to
Europe was not interfered with; and thus American ships were allowed
to carry French colonial produce through an American port to France,
while Russian or Danish ships were forbidden by England to carry such
produce to Europe at all, although their flags and harbors were as
neutral as those of the United States. America became suddenly a much
favored nation, and the enemies of England attributed this unexpected
kindness to fear. In truth it was due to a natural mistake. The British
Treasury calculated that the expense and trouble of carrying sugar and
coffee from Martinique or St. Domingo to Boston, of landing it, paying
duties, re-embarking it, receiving the drawback, and then carrying it
to Bordeaux or Brest, would be such as to give ample advantages to
English vessels which could transship more conveniently at London. The
mistake soon became apparent. The Americans quickly proved that they
could under these restrictions carry West Indian produce to Europe
not only more cheaply than British ships could do it, but almost as
quickly; while it was a positive advantage on the return voyage to make
double freight by stopping at an American port. The consequence of
this discovery was seen in the sudden increase of American shipping,
and was largely due to the aid of British seamen, who found in the
new service better pay, food, and treatment than in their own, and
comparative safety from the press-gang and the lash. At the close of
the century the British flag seemed in danger of complete exclusion
from the harbors of the United States. In 1790 more than 550 British
ships, with a capacity of more than 115,000 tons, had entered inward
and outward, representing about half that number of actual vessels;
in 1799 the custom-house returns showed not 100 entries, and in 1800
about 140, representing a capacity of 40,000 tons. In the three years
1790–1792, the returns showed an average of some 280 outward and inward
entries of American ships with a capacity of 54,000 tons; in 1800 the
entries were 1,057, with a capacity of 236,000 tons. The Americans were
not only beginning to engross the direct trade between their own ports
and Europe, but were also rapidly obtaining the indirect carrying-trade
between the West Indies and the European continent, and even between
one European country and another. The British government began to
feel seriously uneasy. At a frightful cost the people of England were
striving to crush the navies and commerce of France and Spain, only to
build up the power of a dangerous rival beyond the ocean.
Doubtless the British government would have taken measures to correct
its mistake, if the political situation had not hampered its energies.
Chief-Justice Jay, in 1794, negotiated a treaty with Lord Grenville
which was in some respects very hard upon the United States, but was
inestimably valuable to them, because it tied Pitt’s hands and gave
time for the new American Constitution to acquire strength. Ten years
of steady progress were well worth any temporary concessions, even
though these concessions exasperated France, and roused irritation
between her and the United States which in 1798 became actual
hostility. The prospect that the United States would become the ally
of England was so fair that Pitt dared not disturb it. His government
was in a manner forced to give American interests free play, and to
let American shipping gain a sudden and unnatural enlargement. His
liberality was well paid. For a moment France drove the United States
to reprisals; and as the immediate consequence, St. Domingo became
practically independent, owing to the support given by the United
States to Toussaint. Even the reconciliation of France with America
effected by Bonaparte and Talleyrand in 1800 did not at first redress
the balance. Not till the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, did France recover
her colonies; and not till a year later did Bonaparte succeed, by the
sacrifice of Louisiana, in bringing the United States back to their old
attitude of jealousy toward England.
Nevertheless, indications had not been wanting that England was aware
of the advantage she had given to American commerce, and still better
of the advantages which had been given it by Nature. All the Acts
of Parliament on the statute-book could not prevent the West Indies
from being largely dependent on the United States; yet the United
States need not be allowed the right to carry West Indian produce to
France,--a right which depended only on so-called international law,
and was worthless unless supported by the stronger force. A new Order
was issued, Jan. 25, 1798, which admitted European neutrals to enemies’
colonies, and allowed them to bring French colonial produce to England
or to their own ports. This Order was looked upon as a side-blow at
American shipping, which was not allowed the same privilege of sailing
direct from the Antilles to Europe. The new Order was justified on the
ground that the old rule discriminated in favor of American merchants,
whose competition might be injurious to the commercial interests of
England.[229]
Further than this the British government did not then go; on the
contrary, it officially confirmed the existing arrangement. The British
courts of admiralty conformed closely to the rules of their political
chiefs. Sir William Scott, better known as Lord Stowell, whose great
reputation as a judge was due to the remarkable series of judgments
in which he created a new system of admiralty law, announced with his
usual clearness the rules by which he meant to be guided. In the case
of the “Emmanuel,” in November, 1799, he explained the principle on
which the law permitted neutrals to carry French produce from their
own country to France. “By importation,” he said, “the produce became
part of the national stock of the neutral country; the inconveniences
of aggravated delay and expense were a safeguard against this right
becoming a special convenience to France or a serious abridgement of
belligerent rights.” Soon afterward, in the case of the “Polly,” April
29, 1800, he took occasion to define what he meant by importation into
a neutral country. He said it was not his business to decide what was
universally the test of a _bona fide_ importation; but he was
strongly disposed to hold that it would be sufficient if the goods were
proved to have been landed and the duties paid; and he did accordingly
rule that such proof was sufficient to answer the fair demands of his
court.
Rufus King, then American minister in London, succeeded in obtaining
from Pitt an express acceptance of this rule as binding on the
government. On the strength of a report[230] from the King’s Advocate,
dated March 16, 1801, the British Secretary of State notified the
American minister that what Great Britain considered as the general
principle of colonial trade had been relaxed in a certain degree in
consideration of the present state of commerce. Neutrals might import
French colonial produce, and convey it by re-exportation to France.
Landing the goods and paying the duties in America legalized the trade,
even though these goods were at once re-shipped and forwarded to
France on account of the same owners.
With this double guaranty Jefferson began his administration, and the
American merchants continued their profitable business. Not only did
they build and buy large numbers of vessels, and borrow all the capital
they could obtain, but doubtless some French and Spanish merchants,
besides a much greater number of English, made use of the convenient
American flag. The Yankees exulted loudly over the decline of British
shipping in their harbors; the British masters groaned to see
themselves sacrificed by their own government; and the British admirals
complained bitterly that their prize-money was cut off, and that they
were wearing out their lives in the hardest service, in order to foster
a commerce of smugglers and perjurers, whose only protection was the
flag of a country that had not a single line-of-battle ship to fly it.
Yet President Jefferson had reason to weigh long and soberly the
pointed remark with which the King’s Advocate began his report,--that
the general principle with respect to the colonial trade had been to
a certain extent relaxed in consideration of the present state of
commerce. No doubt the British pretension, as a matter of international
law, was outrageous. The so-called rule of 1756 was neither more nor
less than a rule of force; but when was international law itself
anything more than a law of force? The moment a nation found itself
unable to show some kind of physical defence for its protection, the
wisdom of Grotius and Bynkershoek could not prevent it from being
plundered; and how could President Jefferson complain merely because
American ships were forbidden by England to carry French sugars to
France, when he looked on without a protest while England and France
committed much greater outrages on every other country within their
reach?
President Jefferson believed that the United States had ample means
to resist any British pretension. As his letters to Paine and Logan
showed, he felt that European Powers could be controlled through the
interests of commerce.[231] He was the more firmly convinced by the
extraordinary concessions which Pitt had made, and by the steady
encouragement he gave to the American merchant. Jefferson felt sure
that England could not afford to sacrifice a trade of some forty
million dollars, and that her colonies could not exist without access
to the American market. What need to spend millions on a navy, when
Congress, as Jefferson believed, already grasped England by the throat,
and could suffocate her by a mere turn of the wrist!
This reasoning had much in its favor. To Pitt the value of the American
trade at a time of war with France and Spain was immense; and when
taken in connection with the dependence of the West Indian colonies on
America, it made a combination of British interests centring in the
United States which much exceeded the entire value of all England’s
other branches of foreign commerce. Its prospective value was still
greater if things should remain as they were, and if England should
continue to undersell all rivals in articles of general manufacture.
England could well afford to lose great sums of money in the form of
neutral freights rather than drive Congress to a protective system
which should create manufactures of cotton, woollen, and iron. These
were motives which had their share in the civility with which England
treated America; and year by year their influence should naturally have
increased.
Of all British markets the American was the most valuable; but next
to the American market was that of the West Indies. In some respects
the West Indian was of the two the better worth preserving. From head
to foot the planters and their half-million negroes were always clad
in cottons or linens made by the clothiers of Yorkshire, Wiltshire,
or Belfast. Every cask and hoop, every implement and utensil, was
supplied from the British Islands. The sailing of a West Indian convoy
was “an epoch in the diary of every shop and warehouse throughout
the Kingdom.”[232] The West Indian colonies employed, including the
fisheries, above a thousand sail of shipping and twenty-five thousand
seamen. While America might, and one day certainly would, manufacture
for herself, the West Indies could not even dream of it; there the
only profitable or practicable industry was cultivation of the
soil, and the chief article of cultivation was the sugar-cane. Rival
industries to those of Great Britain were impossible; the only danger
that threatened British control was the loss of naval supremacy or the
revolt of the negroes.
A great majority of British electors would certainly have felt no
hesitation in deciding, as between the markets of the United States and
of the West Indies, that if a choice must be made, good policy required
the government to save at all hazards the West Indies. Both as a
permanent market for manufactures and as a steady support for shipping,
the West Indian commerce held the first place in British interests.
This fact needed to be taken into account by the United States
government before relying with certainty on the extent to which Great
Britain could be controlled by the interests involved in the American
trade. At the most critical moment all Jefferson’s calculations might
be upset by the growth of a conviction in England that the colonial
system was in serious danger; and to make this chance stronger, another
anxiety was so closely connected with it as to cause incessant alarm in
the British mind.
The carrying-trade between the French West Indies and Europe which
had thus fallen into American hands, added to the natural increase
of national exports and imports, required a large amount of
additional shipping; and what was more directly hostile to English
interests, it drew great numbers of British sailors into the American
merchant-service. The desertion of British seamen and the systematic
encouragement offered to deserters in every seaport of the Union were
serious annoyances, which the American government was unable to excuse
or correct. Between 1793 and 1801 they reached the proportions of a
grave danger to the British service. Every British government packet
which entered the port of New York during the winter before Jefferson’s
accession to power lost almost every seaman in its crew; and neither
people nor magistrates often lent help to recover them. At Norfolk
the crew of a British ship deserted to an American sloop-of-war,
whose commander, while admitting the fact, refused to restore the
men, alleging his construction of official orders in his excuse.[233]
In most American harbors such protection as the British shipmaster
obtained sprang from the personal good-will of magistrates, who without
strict legal authority consented to apply, for the benefit of the
foreign master, the merchant-shipping law of the United States; but
in one serious case even this voluntary assistance was stopped by the
authority of a State government.
This interference was due to the once famous dispute over Jonathan
Robbins, which convulsed party politics in America during the heated
election of 1800. Thomas Nash, a boatswain on the British frigate
“Hermione,” having been ringleader in conspiracy and murder on the high
seas, was afterward identified in the United States under the name
and with the papers of Jonathan Robbins of Danbury, in Connecticut.
On a requisition from the British minister, dated June 3, 1799, he
was delivered under the extradition clause of Jay’s treaty, and was
hung. The Republican party, then in opposition, declared that Robbins,
or Nash, was in their belief an American citizen whose surrender was
an act of base subservience to Great Britain. An effigy of Robbins
hanging to a gibbet was a favorite electioneering device at public
meetings. The State of Virginia, having a similar grievance of its own,
went so far as to enact a law[234] which forbade, under the severest
penalties, any magistrate who acted under authority of the State to
be instrumental in transporting any person out of its jurisdiction.
As citizens of the Union, sworn to support the Constitution, such
magistrates were equally bound with the Federal judges to grant
warrants of commitment, under the Twenty-seventh Article of Jay’s
treaty, against persons accused of specified crimes. The Virginia
Act directly contravened the treaty; while indirectly it prevented
magistrates from granting warrants against deserters and holding them
in custody, so that every English vessel which entered a Virginia port
was at once abandoned by her crew, who hastened to enter the public or
private ships of the United States.[235]
The captain of any British frigate which might happen to run into the
harbor of New York, if he went ashore, was likely to meet on his return
to the wharf some of his boat’s crew strolling about the town, every
man supplied with papers of American citizenship. This was the more
annoying, because American agents in British ports habitually claimed
and received the benefit of the British law; while so far as American
papers were concerned, no pretence was made of concealing the fraud,
but they were issued in any required quantity, and were transferred for
a few dollars from hand to hand.
Not only had the encouragement to desertion a share in the decline
of British shipping in American harbors, but it also warranted, and
seemed almost to render necessary, the only countervailing measure
the British government could employ. Whatever happened to the
merchant-service, the British navy could not be allowed to suffer.
England knew no conscription for her armies, because for centuries she
had felt no need of general military service; but at any moment she
might compel her subjects to bear arms, if circumstances required it.
Her necessities were greater on the ocean. There, from time immemorial,
a barbarous sort of conscription, known as impressment, had been
the ordinary means of supplying the royal navy in emergencies; and
every seafaring man was liable to be dragged at any moment from his
beer-cellar or coasting-vessel to man the guns of a frigate on its way
to a three-years’ cruise in the West Indies or the Mediterranean. Mere
engagement in a foreign merchant-service did not release the British
sailor from his duty. When the captain of a British frigate overhauled
an American merchant-vessel for enemy’s property or contraband of
war, he sent an officer on board who mustered the crew, and took
out any seamen whom he believed to be British. The measure, as the
British navy regarded it, was one of self-protection. If the American
government could not or would not discourage desertion, the naval
commander would recover his men in the only way he could. Thus a circle
of grievances was established on each side. Pitt’s concessions to the
United States irritated the British navy and merchant-marine, while
they gave great profits to American shipping; the growth of American
shipping stimulated desertions from the British service to the extent
of injuring its efficiency; and these desertions in their turn led to
a rigorous exercise of the right of impressment. To find some point
at which this vicious circle could be broken was a matter of serious
consequence to both countries, but most so to the one which avowed that
it did not mean to protect its interests by force.
Great Britain could have broken the circle by increasing the pay
and improving the condition of her seamen; but she was excessively
conservative, and the burdens already imposed on her commerce were so
great that she could afford to risk nothing. In the face of a combined
navy like that of Spain and France, her control of the seas at any
given point, such as the West Indies, was still doubtful; and in the
face of American competition, her huge convoys suffered under great
disadvantage. Conscious of her own power, she thought that the United
States should be first to give way. Had the American government been
willing to perform its neutral obligations strictly, the circle might
have been broken without much trouble; but the United States wished to
retain their advantage, and preferred to risk whatever England might
do rather than discourage desertion, or enact and enforce a strict
naturalization law, or punish fraud. The national government was too
weak to compel the States to respect neutral obligations, even if it
had been disposed to make the attempt.
The practice of impressment brought the two governments to a deadlock
on an issue of law. No one denied that every government had the right
to command the services of its native subjects, and as yet no one
ventured to maintain that a merchant-ship on the high seas could
lawfully resist the exercise of this right; but the law had done
nothing to define the rights of naturalized subjects or citizens. The
British government might, no doubt, impress its own subjects; but
almost every British sailor in the American service carried papers of
American citizenship, and although some of these were fraudulent, many
were genuine. The law of England, as declared from time out of mind by
every generation of her judges, held that the allegiance of a subject
was indefeasible, and therefore that naturalization was worthless.
The law of the United States, as declared by Chief-Justice Ellsworth
in 1799, was in effect the same;[236] he held that no citizen could
dissolve the compact of protection and defence between himself and
society without the consent or default of the community. On both sides
the law was emphatic to the point that naturalization could not bind
the government which did not consent to it; and the United States could
hardly require England to respect naturalization papers which the
Supreme Court of the United States declared itself unable to respect in
a similar case. Nevertheless, while courts and judges declare what the
law is or ought to be, they bind only themselves, and their decisions
have no necessary effect on the co-ordinate branches of government.
While the judges laid down one doctrine in Westminster Hall, Parliament
laid down another in St. Stephen’s chapel; and no one could say whether
the law or the statute was final. The British statute-book contained
Acts of Parliament as old as the reign of Queen Anne[237] to encourage
the admission of foreign seamen into the British navy, offering them
naturalization as an inducement. American legislation went not quite
so far, but by making naturalization easy it produced worse results.
A little perjury, in no wise unsafe, was alone required in order to
transform British seamen into American citizens; and perjury was the
commonest commodity in a seaport. The British government was forced
to decide whether papers so easily obtained and transferred should be
allowed to bar its claims on the services of its subjects, and whether
it could afford to become a party to the destruction of its own marine,
even though the United States should join with France and carry on
endless war.
That there were some points which not even the loss of American
trade would bring England to concede was well known to Jefferson;
and on these points he did not mean to insist. Setting the matter of
impressment aside, the relations between England and America had never
been better than when the new President took office March 4, 1801.
The British government seemed earnest in conciliation, and lost no
opportunity of showing its good-will. Under the Sixth Article of Jay’s
treaty, a commission had been appointed to settle long-standing debts
due to British subjects, but held in abeyance by State legislation in
contravention of the treaty of 1783. After long delays the commission
met at Philadelphia and set to work, but had made little progress
when the two American commissioners, with the President’s approval,
in the teeth of the treaty which created the Board, refused to accept
its decisions, and seceded. This violent measure was not taken by
the Administration without uneasiness, for England might reasonably
have resented it; but after some further delay the British government
consented to negotiate again, and at last accepted a round sum of three
million dollars in full discharge of the British claim. This was a
case in which England was the aggrieved party; she behaved equally
well in other cases where the United States were aggrieved. Rufus King
complained that her admiralty courts in the West Indies and at Halifax
were a scandal; in deference to his remonstrances these courts were
thoroughly reformed by Act of Parliament. The vice-admiralty court at
Nassau condemned the American brigantine “Leopard,” engaged in carrying
Malaga wine from the United States to the Spanish West Indies. The
American minister complained of the decision, and within three days
the King’s Advocate reported in his favor.[238] The report was itself
founded on Sir William Scott’s favorable decision in the case of the
“Polly.” Soon afterward the American minister complained that Captain
Pellew, of the “Cleopatra,” and Admiral Parker had not effectually
restrained their subordinates on the American station; both officers
were promptly recalled. Although the Ministry had not yet consented to
make any arrangement on the practice of impressment, Rufus King felt
much hope that they might consent even to this reform; meanwhile Lord
Grenville checked the practice, and professed a strong wish to find
some expedient that should take its place.
There was no reason to doubt the sincerity of the British Foreign
Office in wishing friendship. Its policy was well expressed in a
despatch written from Philadelphia by Robert Liston, the British
minister, shortly before he left the United States to return
home:[239]--
“The advantages to be ultimately reaped from a perseverance in
the line of conduct which Great Britain has adopted for the last
four years appear to my mind to be infallible and of infinite
magnitude; the profitable consequences of a state of hostility,
small and uncertain. I have been pleasing my imagination with
looking forward to the distant spectacle of all the northern
continent of America covered with friendly though not subject
States, consuming our manufactures, speaking our language,
proud of their parent State, attached to her prosperity. War
must bring with it extensive damage to our navigation, the
probable loss of Canada, and the _world_ behind it, the
propagation of enmity and prejudices which it may be impossible
to eradicate. The system of the American government does not
strike me, with the near view I have of it, as being in so
perilous a situation as is imagined in Europe. I am willing to
avoid political prophecies, but I confess I think it will get on
well enough if the country remains in peace; and if they go to
war, the fabric may acquire strength. God forbid that it should
be to our detriment, and to the triumph of our enemies!”