Could the seizure of British subjects in such
cases be regarded as within the exercise of a belligerent right, the
acknowledged laws of war, which forbid an article of captured property
to be adjudged without a regular investigation before a competent
tribunal, would imperiously demand the fairest trial where the sacred
rights of persons were at issue. In place of such a trial these rights
are subjected to the will of every petty commander.
The practice, hence, is so far from affecting British subjects alone
that, under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of American
citizens, under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag,
have been torn from their country and from everything dear to them; have
been dragged on board ships of war of a foreign nation and exposed,
under the severities of their discipline, to be exiled to the most
distant and deadly climes, to risk their lives in the battles of their
oppressors, and to be the melancholy instruments of taking away those of
their own brethren.
Against this crying enormity, which Great Britain would be so prompt
to avenge if committed against herself, the United States have in vain
exhausted remonstrances and expostulations, and that no proof might be
wanting of their conciliatory dispositions, and no pretext left for a
continuance of the practice, the British Government was formally assured
of the readiness of the United States to enter into arrangements such as
could not be rejected if the recovery of British subjects were the real
and the sole object.
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