_Mr. Webster to Lord Ashburton._
Department of State, Washington,
August 8, 1842.
My Lord,--We have had several conversations on the subject of
impressment, but I do not understand that your Lordship has instructions
from your government to negotiate upon it, nor does the government of
the United States see any utility in opening such negotiation, unless
the British government is prepared to renounce the practice in all
future wars.
No cause has produced to so great an extent, and for so long a period,
disturbing and irritating influences on the political relations of the
United States and England, as the impressment of seamen by British
cruisers from American merchant-vessels.
From the commencement of the French Revolution to the breaking out of
the war between the two countries in 1812, hardly a year elapsed without
loud complaint and earnest remonstrance. A deep feeling of opposition to
the right claimed, and to the practice exercised under it, and not
unfrequently exercised without the least regard to what justice and
humanity would have dictated, even if the right itself had been
admitted, took possession of the public mind of America, and this
feeling, it is well known, co-operated most powerfully with other causes
to produce the state of hostilities which ensued.
At different periods, both before and since the war, negotiations have
taken place between the two governments, with the hope of finding some
means of quieting these complaints. At some times, the effectual
abolition of the practice has been requested and treated of; at other
times, its temporary suspension; and at other times, again, the
limitation of its exercise, and some security against its enormous
abuses.
A common destiny has attended these efforts; they have all failed. The
question stands at this moment where it stood fifty years ago. The
nearest approach to a settlement was a convention proposed in 1803, and
which had come to the point of signature, when it was broken off in
consequence of the British government insisting that the _narrow seas_
should be expressly excepted out of the sphere over which the
contemplated stipulation against impressment should extend. The American
Minister, Mr. King, regarded this exception as quite inadmissible, and
chose rather to abandon the negotiation than to acquiesce in the
doctrine which it proposed to establish.
England asserts the right of impressing British subjects, in time of
war, out of neutral merchant-vessels, and of deciding by her visiting
officers who, among the crews of such merchant-vessels, are British
subjects. She asserts this as a legal exercise of the prerogative of the
crown; which prerogative is alleged to be founded on the English law of
the perpetual and indissoluble allegiance of the subject, and his
obligation under all circumstances, and for his whole life, to render
military service to the crown whenever required.
This statement, made in the words of eminent British jurists, shows at
once that the English claim is far broader than the basis or platform on
which it is raised. The law relied on is English law; the obligations
insisted on are obligations existing between the crown of England and
its subjects. This law and these obligations, it is admitted, may be
such as England may choose they shall be. But then they must be confined
to the parties. Impressment of seamen out of and beyond English
territory, and from on board the ships of other nations, is an
interference with the rights of other nations; is further, therefore,
than English prerogative can legally extend; and is nothing but an
attempt to enforce the peculiar law of England beyond the dominions and
jurisdiction of the crown. The claim asserts an extra-territorial
authority for the law of British prerogative, and assumes to exercise
this extra-territorial authority, to the manifest injury and annoyance
of the citizens and subjects of other states, on board their own
vessels, on the high seas.
Every merchant-vessel on the seas is rightfully considered as part of
the territory of the country to which it belongs. The entry, therefore,
into such vessel, being neutral, by a belligerent, is an act of force,
and is, _prima facie_, a wrong, a trespass, which can be justified only
when done for some purpose allowed to form a sufficient justification by
the law of nations. But a British cruiser enters an American
merchant-vessel in order to take therefrom supposed British subjects;
offering no justification, therefore, under the law of nations, but
claiming the right under the law of England respecting the king's
prerogative. This cannot be defended. English soil, English territory,
English jurisdiction, is the appropriate sphere for the operation of
English law. The ocean is the sphere of the law of nations; and any
merchant-vessel on the seas is by that law under the protection of the
laws of her own nation, and may claim immunity, unless in cases in which
that law allows her to be entered or visited.
If this notion of perpetual allegiance, and the consequent power of the
prerogative, was the law of the world; if it formed part of the
conventional code of nations, and was usually practised, like the right
of visiting neutral ships, for the purpose of discovering and seizing
enemy's property, then impressment might be defended as a common right,
and there would be no remedy for the evil till the national code should
be altered. But this is by no means the case. There is no such principle
incorporated into the code of nations. The doctrine stands only as
English law, not as a national law; and English law cannot be of force
beyond English dominion. Whatever duties or relations that law creates
between the sovereign and his subjects can be enforced and maintained
only within the realm, or proper possessions or territory of the
sovereign. There may be quite as just a prerogative right to the
property of subjects as to their personal services, in an exigency of
the state; but no government thinks of controlling by its own laws
property of its subjects situated abroad; much less does any government
think of entering the territory of another power for the purpose of
seizing such property and applying it to its own uses. As laws, the
prerogatives of the crown of England have no obligation on persons or
property domiciled or situated abroad.
"When, therefore," says an authority not unknown or unregarded on either
side of the Atlantic, "we speak of the right of a state to bind its own
native subjects everywhere, we speak only of its own claim and exercise
of sovereignty over them when they return within its own territorial
jurisdiction, and not of its right to compel or require obedience to
such laws, on the part of other nations, within their own territorial
sovereignty. On the contrary, every nation has an exclusive right to
regulate persons and things within its own territory, according to its
sovereign will and public polity."
The good sense of these principles, their remarkable pertinency to the
subject now under consideration, and the extraordinary consequences
resulting from the British doctrine, are signally manifested by that
which we see taking place every day. England acknowledges herself
overburdened with population of the poorer classes. Every instance of
the emigration of persons of those classes is regarded by her as a
benefit. England, therefore, encourages emigration; means are
notoriously supplied to emigrants, to assist their conveyance, from
public funds; and the New World, and most especially these United
States, receive the many thousands of her subjects thus ejected from the
bosom of their native land by the necessities of their condition. They
come away from poverty and distress in over-crowded cities, to seek
employment, comfort, and new homes in a country of free institutions,
possessed by a kindred race, speaking their own language, and having
laws and usages in many respects like those to which they have been
accustomed; and a country which, upon the whole, is found to possess
more attractions for persons of their character and condition than any
other on the face of the globe. It is stated that, in the quarter of the
year ending with June last, more than twenty-six thousand emigrants left
the single port of Liverpool for the United States, being four or five
times as many as left the same port within the same period for the
British colonies and all other parts of the world. Of these crowds of
emigrants, many arrive in our cities in circumstances of great
destitution, and the charities of the country, both public and private,
are severely taxed to relieve their immediate wants. In time they
mingle with the new community in which they find themselves, and seek
means of living. Some find employment in the cities, others go to the
frontiers, to cultivate lands reclaimed from the forest; and a greater
or less number of the residue, becoming in time naturalized citizens,
enter into the merchant service under the flag of their adopted country.
Now, my Lord, if war should break out between England and a European
power, can any thing be more unjust, any thing more irreconcilable to
the general sentiments of mankind, than that England should seek out
these persons, thus encouraged by her and compelled by their own
condition to leave their native homes, tear them away from their new
employments, their new political relations, and their domestic
connections, and force them to undergo the dangers and hardships of
military service for a country which has thus ceased to be their own
country? Certainly, certainly, my Lord, there can be but one answer to
this question. Is it not far more reasonable that England should either
prevent such emigration of her subjects, or that, if she encourage and
promote it, she should leave them, not to the embroilment of a double
and contradictory allegiance, but to their own voluntary choice, to form
such relations, political or social, as they see fit, in the country
where they are to find their bread, and to the laws and institutions of
which they are to look for defence and protection?
A question of such serious importance ought now to be put at rest. If
the United States give shelter and protection to those whom the policy
of England annually casts upon their shores,--if, by the benign
influences of their government and institutions, and by the happy
condition of the country, those emigrants become raised from poverty to
comfort, finding it easy even to become landholders, and being allowed
to partake in the enjoyment of all civil rights,--if all this may be
done, (and all this is done, under the countenance and encouragement of
England herself,) is it not high time that, yielding that which had its
origin in feudal ideas as inconsistent with the present state of
society, and especially with the intercourse and relations subsisting
between the Old World and the New, England should at length formally
disclaim all right to the services of such persons, and renounce all
control over their conduct?
But impressment is subject to objections of a much wider range. If it
could be justified in its application to those who are declared to be
its only objects, it still remains true that, in its exercise, it
touches the political rights of other governments, and endangers the
security of their own native subjects and citizens. The sovereignty of
the state is concerned in maintaining its exclusive jurisdiction and
possession over its merchant-ships on the seas, except so far as the law
of nations justifies intrusion upon that possession for special
purposes; and all experience has shown, that no member of a crew,
wherever born, is safe against impressment when a ship is visited.
The evils and injuries resulting from the actual practice can hardly be
overstated, and have ever proved themselves to be such as should lead to
its relinquishment, even if it were founded in any defensible principle.
The difficulty of discriminating between English subjects and American
citizens has always been found to be great, even when an honest purpose
of discrimination has existed. But the lieutenant of a man-of-war,
having necessity for men, is apt to be a summary judge, and his
decisions will be quite as significant of his own wants and his own
power as of the truth and justice of the case. An extract from a letter
of Mr. King, of the 13th of April, 1797, to the American Secretary of
State, shows something of the enormous extent of these wrongful
seizures.
"Instead of a few, and these in many instances equivocal cases, I have,"
says he, "since the month of July past, made application for the
discharge from British men-of-war of two hundred and seventy-one seamen,
who, stating themselves to be Americans, have claimed my interference.
Of this number, eighty-six have been ordered by the Admiralty to be
discharged, thirty-seven more have been detained as British subjects or
as American volunteers, or for want of proof that they are Americans,
and to my applications for the discharge of the remaining one hundred
and forty-eight I have received no answer; the ships on board of which
these seamen were detained having, in many instances, sailed before an
examination was made in consequence of my application.
"It is certain that some of those who have applied to me are not
American citizens, but the exceptions are, in my opinion, few, and the
evidence, exclusive of certificates, has been such as, in most cases,
to satisfy me that the applicants were real Americans, who have been
forced into the British service, and who, with singular constancy, have
generally persevered in refusing pay or bounty, though in some instances
they have been in service more than two years."
But the injuries of impressment are by no means confined to its
immediate subjects, or the individuals on whom it is practised. Vessels
suffer from the weakening of their crews, and voyages are often delayed,
and not unfrequently broken up, by subtraction from the number of
necessary hands by impressment. And what is of still greater and more
general moment, the fear of impressment has been found to create great
difficulty in obtaining sailors for the American merchant service in
times of European war. Seafaring men, otherwise inclined to enter into
that service, are, as experience has shown, deterred by the fear of
finding themselves erelong in compulsory military service in British
ships of war. Many instances have occurred, fully established by proof,
in which raw seamen, natives of the United States, fresh from the fields
of agriculture, entering for the first time on shipboard, have been
impressed before they made the land, placed on the decks of British
men-of-war, and compelled to serve for years before they could obtain
their release, or revisit their country and their homes. Such instances
become known, and their effect in discouraging young men from engaging
in the merchant service of their country can neither be doubted nor
wondered at. More than all, my Lord, the practice of impressment,
whenever it has existed, has produced, not conciliation and good
feeling, but resentment, exasperation, and animosity between the two
great commercial countries of the world.
In the calm and quiet which have succeeded the late war, a condition so
favorable for dispassionate consideration, England herself has evidently
seen the harshness of impressment, even when exercised on seamen in her
own merchant service, and she has adopted measures calculated, if not to
renounce the power or to abolish the practice, yet at least to supersede
its necessity by other means of manning the royal navy more compatible
with justice and the rights of individuals, and far more conformable to
the spirit and sentiments of the age.
Under these circumstances, the government of the United States has used
the occasion of your Lordship's pacific mission to review this whole
subject, and to bring it to your notice and that of your government. It
has reflected on the past, pondered the condition of the present, and
endeavored to anticipate, so far as might be in its power, the probable
future; and I am now to communicate to your Lordship the result of these
deliberations.
The American government, then, is prepared to say that the practice of
impressing seamen from American vessels cannot hereafter be allowed to
take place. That practice is founded on principles which it does not
recognize, and is invariably attended by consequences so unjust, so
injurious, and of such formidable magnitude, as cannot be submitted to.
In the early disputes between the two governments on this so long
contested topic, the distinguished person to whose hands were first
intrusted the seals of this department[1] declared, that "the simplest
rule will be, that the vessel being American shall be evidence that the
seamen on board are such."
Fifty years' experience, the utter failure of many negotiations, and a
careful reconsideration, now had, of the whole subject, at a moment when
the passions are laid, and no present interest or emergency exists to
bias the judgment, have fully convinced this government that this is not
only the simplest and best, but the only rule, which can be adopted and
observed, consistently with the rights and honor of the United States
and the security of their citizens. That rule announces, therefore, what
will hereafter be the principle maintained by their government. In every
regularly documented American merchant-vessel the crew who navigate it
will find their protection in the flag which is over them.
This announcement is not made, my Lord, to revive useless recollections
of the past, nor to stir the embers from fires which have been, in a
great degree, smothered by many years of peace. Far otherwise. Its
purpose is to extinguish those fires effectually, before new incidents
arise to fan them into flame. The communication is in the spirit of
peace, and for the sake of peace, and springs from a deep and
conscientious conviction that high interests of both nations require
this so long contested and controverted subject now to be finally put to
rest. I persuade myself that you will do justice to this frank and
sincere avowal of motives, and that you will communicate your sentiments
in this respect to your government.
This letter closes, my Lord, on my part, our official correspondence;
and I gladly use the occasion to offer you the assurance of my high and
sincere regard.