Remarks and Criticisms on the Hon. John Quincy Adams's Letter to the Hon. Harrison Gray Otis (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1808 Excerpt: ...is of novel date, and of no authority. If the case you mention did not frequently occur, it was because the seamen of belligerent powers were seldom in the employ of other states. You know (and if not you may easily learn) that it has been the ancient practice of England, when a war broke out, to call for the return of all seamen and seafaring people, by a Proclamation. And you know (or may easily learn) that France, like England, has insisted on this very right, and maintained it by her practice J and that she has (during this very war) taken her seamen from our ships. You know that a-contract between two parties cannot impair the validity of a prior contract by either, with a third person, nor absolve them from their duties. And when you speak of seamen on board of our merchant vesselg as being within our jurisdiction upon the high seas, you know that you advance a position which, if maintained to the extent, must involve every neutral nation in war. If enemies' goods are taken within the jurisdiction of a neutral power, it is an act of hostility. If a neutral merchantship(on the high sea)is within the neutral jurisdiction, so as to render impressment unlawful, she is equally within the same jurisdiction to every other purpose; consequently all the cases of capture of enemies' goods on board a neutral ship, the legality of which has been admitted from the earliest times, must (according to your doctrine) be hostile aggressions. We will not follow you through the turnings. and doubling of which the subject is susceptible "We all now know, and from the relation in which you stood to the executive department, you could not have been ignorant (unless indeed they fooled you with half confidence) that Great-Britain offered so to restrain the practice of im...