American State Papers (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from American State Papers

As we advance in our knowledge of this disease, as facts develope the source from which individuals receive it, the state authorities charged with the care of the publick health, and congress with that of the general commerce, will become able to regulate with effect their respective functions in these departments. The burthen of quarantines is felt at home as well as abroad; their efficacy merits examination. Although the health laws of the states should be found to need no present revisal by Congress, yet commerce claims that their attention be ever awake to them.

Since our last meeting, the aspect of our foreign relations has considerably changed. Our coasts have been infested, and our harbours watched, by private armed vessels, some of them without commissions, some with illegal commissions, others, with those of legal form, but committing piratical acts beyond the authority of their commissions. They have captured in the very entrance of our harbours, a well as on the high seas, not only the vessels of our friends, coming to trade with is, but our own also. They have carried them oft under pretence of legal adjudication, but, not daring to approach a court of justice, they have plundered and funk them by the way, or in obscure places, where no evidence could arise against them, maltreated the crews, and abandoned them in boats, in the open sea, or on desert shores, without food or covering. These enormities, appearing to be unreached by any control of their sovereigns, I found it necessary to equip a force, to cruize within our own seas, to arrest all vessels of these descriptions found hovering on our coasts within the limits of the Gulf Stream, and to bring the offenders in for trial aspirates.

The fame system of hovering on our coasts and harbours, under colour of seeking enemies, has been also carried on by publick armed ships, to the great annoyance and oppression of our commerce. New principles too have been interpolated into the law of nations, founded neither in justice, nor the usage or acknowledgment of nations. According to these, a belligerent takes to itself a commerce with its own. enemy, which it denies to a neutral, on the ground of its aiding that enemy in the war. But reason revolts at such an inconsistency; and the neutral, having equal right with the belligerent to decide the question, the interests of our constituents, and the duty of maintaining the authority of reason, the only umpire between just nations, impose on us the obligation of providing an effectual and determined opposition to a doctrine to injurious to the rights of peaceable nations. Indeed the confidence we ought to have in the justice of others, still countenances the hope, that a founder view of those rights with of itself induce from every belligerent a more correct observance of them.

With Spain our negotiations for a settlement of differences have not had a satisfactory issue. Spoliations during the former war, for which she had formally acknowledged herself responsible, have been refused to be compensated but on conditions affecting other claims in no wife connected with them. Yet the fame practices are renewed in the present war, and are already of great amount. On the Mobile, our commerce, passing through that river, continues to be obstructed by arbitrary duties and vexatious searches. Propositions for adjusting amicably the boundaries of Louisiana have not been acceded to. While however the right is unsettled, we have avoided changing the state of things, by taking new posts, or strengthening ourselves in the disputed territories, in the hope that the other power would not by a contrary conduct, oblige us to meet their example, and, endanger conflicts of authority, the issue of which may not be easily controlled. But in this hope we have now reason to lessen our confidence. Inroads have been recently made into the territories of Orleans and the Mississippi. Our c.