unreasonable pretensions of the United States. There is danger that this may be pushed too far, and that a question may arise, on which our honor and our interests will make concession on our part impossible."

No one is an impartial judge in his own case. If we should meet these rather indiscreet suggestions in the only way in which a charge without specifications can be met, by a denial as broad as the assertion, -the matter would be left precisely as it stood before; that is, each party in its national controversies thinks itself right and its opponent wrong, which is not an uncommon case in human affairs, public and private. This at least may be added, without fear of contradiction, that the United States, in their intercourse with foreign governments have abstained from all interference in European politics, and have confined themselves to the protection of their own rights and interests. As far as concerns theoretical doctrines on the subjects usually controverted between governments, a distinguished English magistrate and civilian pronounces the authority of the United States "to be always great upon all questions of International Law."* Many of the questions which have arisen between this country and England, have been such as most keenly touch the national susceptibilities. That in discussing these questions, at home and abroad, no despatch has

* R. Phillimore's International Law, vol. iii. p. 252.

warmer tone

been written, no word uttered, in a than might be wished, is not to be expected, and is as little likely to have happened on one side of the water as the other. But that the intercourse of the United States with Great Britain has, in the main, been conducted, earnestly indeed, as becomes powerful States treating important subjects, but teously, gravely, and temperately, no one well acquainted with the facts will, I think, deny.

It would not be difficult for me to pass in review our controversies with England, and to show that when she has conceded any portion of our demands, it has not been because they were urged in "an unscrupulous and overbearing tone," (an idea not very complimentary to herself,) but because they were founded in justice and sustained by argument. This is not the occasion for such a review. In a public address, which I had the honor of delivering in this hall last September, I vindicated the negotiations relative to the Northeastern Boundary, from the gross and persistent misrepresentations of which they have been the subject; and I will now only briefly allude to by far the most important chapter in our diplomatic history. I go back to it, because, after the lapse of a generation, the truth has at length pierced through the mists of contemporary interest and passion, and because it will sufficiently show by one very striking example, whether

F

in her intercourse with foreign nations, America has been in the habit of assuming an unscrupulous and overbearing tone, or whether she has been the victim of those qualities on the part of others.

After the short-lived peace of Amiens, a new war, of truly Titanic proportions, broke out between France and England. In the progress of this tremendous struggle, and for the purpose of mutual destruction, a succession of Imperial decrees and Royal Orders in Council were issued by the two powers, by which all neutral commerce was annihilated. Each of the great belligerents maintained that his adversary's decree was a violation of International Law; each justified his own edict on the ground of retaliation, which of course as far as the neutral was concerned was no justification; and between these great conflicting forces the rights and interests of neutrals were crushed. Under these orders and decrees, it is estimated that one hundred millions of American property were swept from the ocean; of the losses and sufferings of our citizens, in weary detention for years at Courts of Admiralty and Vice-Admiralty all round the globe, there can be no estimate. But peace returned to the world; time wore away; and after one generation of the original sufferers had sunk, many of them sorrowstricken and ruined, into the grave, the government of King Louis Philippe, in France, acknowledged the

wrong of the Imperial régime, by a late and partial measure of indemnification, obtained by means of the treaty negotiated with great ability, by Mr. Rives, of Virginia. England, in addition to the capture of our ships and the confiscation of their cargoes, had subjected the United States to the indignity of taking her seamen by impressment from our vessels, -a practice which, in addition to its illegality even under the law of England, and its cruelty, which have since caused it to be abandoned at home, often led to the impressment of our own citizens, both naturalized and native. For this intolerable wrong (which England herself would not have endured a day, from any foreign power), and for the enormous losses accruing under the Orders in Council, the United States not only never received any indemnification, but the losses and sufferings of a war of two years and a half duration, to which she was at length driven, were superadded. These orders were at the time regarded by the liberal school of British statesmen as unjust and oppressive towards neutrals; and though the eminent civilian, Sir William Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell), who presided in the British Court of Admiralty, and who had laid the foundations of a princely fortune by fees accruing in prize causes,*

* Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and Eldon, by William Edward Surtees, D.C.L. [a relative], p. 88.

deemed it "extreme indecency" to admit the possibility, that the Orders in Council could be in contravention of the public law, it is now the almost universal admission of the text-writers, that such was the case. As lately as 1847, the present Lord Chancellor, -then Lord Chief Justice of England,

used this remarkable language: "Of these Orders in Council, Napoleon had no right to complain; but they were grievously unjust to neutrals; and it is now generally allowed, that they were contrary to the law of nations, and to our own municipal law!"

These liberal admissions have come too late to repair the ruined fortunes or to heal the broken hearts of the sufferers: they will not recall to life the thousands who fell on hard-fought fields, in defence of their country's rights. But they do not come too late to rebuke the levity with which it is now intimated, that the United States stand at the august bar of the Public Law, not as reasoning men, but as spoiled children; not too late to suggest the possibility to candid minds, that the next generation may do us the like justice, with reference to more recent controversies.*

Thus, Fellow-Citizens, I have endeavored, without vainglorying, with respect to ourselves, or bitterness

* Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vii. p. 218: Story's Miscellaneous Writings, p. 283; Phillimore's International Law, vol. iii. pp. 250, 539; Manning's Commentary on the Law of Nations, p. 330; Wildman's Institutes of International Law vol. ii. pp. 183, 185; also, the French publicists, Hautefeuille and Ortolan, under the appropriate heads.