The Madisonian. [volume] (Washington City [i.e. Washington, D.C.]) 1837-1845, 1842-03-29
shall navigate it with our property, where we


the symbol of our power and jurisdiction
floats at their mast-heads, they are subject TO
our law, and TO no other human law. If they
do not voluntarily go within marine league OF
a foreign shore, or mediate some willul breach
of its revenue laws any interference of the IN
habltants of that shore, with any thing they
| contain, or any body that sails in them, Except
the rights of belligerants,) is War This prin-
ciple of the sanctity of the neutral flag is just
as applicable, and just as strong, in these de-
taehed parts Of our territory, as in the islands
that stud our bays and coasts, or in the city
of New York itself.
We grant that if vessel-that is, a mere
private vessel-go voluntarily within the juris-
diction of another State, she is taken to have
submitted to that jurisdiction with all Its incl
dents. We say mere private vessel-for
even this is not true of man-of-war, or prl-
vate ship commissioned by Government, which
if she be admitted into foreign port at all, is
presumed to be admitted with the consent
of the foreign sovereign that she shall not
be subject 10 his jurisdiction. So of an am
bassador; so of sovereign travelling in
|
press or implied of that other. Nothing is less
questioned or less questionable than this fiction
of terrtoriality, in all cases of this sort.
Now, we say that merchant ship, driven
by stress of weather, or carried by uis ma
| jor, or forced, in short, by any everything
necessity, into the ports of foreign power,
is, according to the law of nations, fairly
| lo1 hopo off nf lpoc
fed application of the same principle. We
say that nation which should, like Doctor
Franca of misanthropic memory, forbid all
strangers to approach its shores on pain of death
and confscation, would be compelled to make
an exception of cases Of necessity, on pain Of
being treated as horde of robbers and anthro-
pophagi. The day of Barbary pirates, general
ly acknowledged as sovereignties, is gone by
forever, unless England is to succeed to them
as universal legatee, privilege which our re-
spect for great nation forbids us to believe she
will ever claim, but which if il be not forced
upon her, it will be no fault of the New York
" american" and other Americans of the same
kidney. What would England say TO France,
if convict ship of hers, on its way to Botany
Bay, being forced to anchor on the coast within
the jurisdiction of the latter, driven into her
road-steads, she were boarded by French autho-
rites, and her prisoners compulsorily landed and
released on the ground that all criminal laws
are strictly local What would she say to us
if, on the pretext that Impressment of seamen
was against the law of nature, we should un-
dertake to set at large body of them cast by
storm or mutiny within our jurisdiction in one
of her transports?
| This is not case in which we are calling
upon England to enforce our laws within her
territories. No body magnes, as our "Ameri-
can" publcist will have it, that if the negroes
had escaped to land the officers of the vessel
could have had them seized by the civil authori-
ties of foreign country, whose laws forbade
their seizure. But we dispute the right of those
civil authorities to board our ships and take peo-
pie out Of them in such a case. We deny that
there is any analogy at all between the case put
by this writer of fugitive slaves IN Canada, and
slaves not fugitive aboard of an American
pessel, or, what is just the same thing
American ground. This Is the point on
which the whole question turns. Will the
comfy of nations or, indeed. any usage
Of States pretending to the least clviliza
ton, permit, that nation should 60 out Of its
way to execute its muncip pal law on board Of
foreign vessel forced by an everything necess-
ty within the jurisdiction of that nation, and
asking nothing at its hands, but momentary
asylum and protection Lord PaImerston had
too much sense to set up the monstrous preten-
sion, which these pseudo-Americans are gra-
tutously endeav oring to maintain for England
at the expense of the dearest at all the rights Of
their own country, her independence as a
sovereign power. He did not affect to justify,
for he we'll knew he could not justify the Off
cious and actiue interference of British officers
| in such case. He was not insane enough to
arrogate to England, the right of compelling
foreign States TO adopt her municipal law in
| stead of their own, on board of their own ships,
or stupid enough to suppose, that such arrogant
| folly chad he been guilty of it) could have re-
| ceved at the hands Of foreign States any thing
| but the scorn it would have deserved. But
| Lord Pamerston, we admit, was too narrow
! minded statesman to be up to the extrava
gances called for by the occasion. He thought
his official duty as British Minister and gen
| tleman, repaired of hin no more than that he
| should make the best possible defence Of his
Government under the existing law of nations.
He was not Jacobin enough to deny that law
to be binding upon England, because she chose
| to consider it at war with reason and nature,
and he had not the motives of your pseudo
| americans and traitorous aboIitonists, for sa-
crifcing all law and all right and every barrier
of the independence of nations, in order at once