310 



DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



the responsibility entailed from an insufficient per- 

 formance of it. 



It appears that some of the insurgent emissaries, in 

 conjunction with desperate adventurers of the United 

 States, went to the extent of seizing and occupying 

 two different spots on the American coast, neither or 

 them within the jurisdiction of the Union, nor yet 

 within that of any responsible Power. Here they 

 made bases from which to conduct their hostile opera- 

 tions against the commerce of Spain and Portugal, 

 very much in the manner, but not nearly with so 

 much success, as Liverpool in this kingdom and the 

 port of Nassau w_ere made basis of, against the com- 

 merce of the United States, by insurgent emissaries 

 during the late war. These proceedings soon at- 

 tracted the attention of the President, who dwelt 

 upon the necessity of adopting prompt measures of 

 prevention in his annual recommendations to Con- 

 gress in the year 1817. The matter was referred in 

 course to the consideration of the Committee of Ihe 

 House of Representatives, which made a report rec- 

 ommending that these establishments should be at 

 once suppressed by force, if necessary. 



Among the reasons given for resorting to this 'sum- 

 mary proceeding are the following, to which I ask a 

 moment of your Lordship's attention: 



The immediate tendency of suffering such armaments, in 

 defiance of our laws, would have been to embroil the United 

 States with all the nations whose commerce with our coun- 

 try was suffering under these depredations: and if not 

 checked by all the means tn the power of the Government, 

 would have authorized claims from the subjects of foreign 

 Governments for indemnities at the expense of this nation, 

 for captures by our people in vessels fitted out in our ports, 

 and, as could not fail of being alleged, countenanced by the 

 very neglect of the necessary means of suppressing them. 



It would be difficult to express in more forcible 

 language the principle established by the law of na- 

 tions than is done in these sentences. The action 

 recommended was, moreover, performed so promptly, 

 that soon afterwards the President, in a special Ales- 

 sage, was enabled to announce that the piratical 

 establishments at Amelia Island and at Galveston bad 

 been suppressed. The paramount necessity had been 

 thought to justify the exercise of power even over 

 territory not within the national jurisdiction. 



But when I turn my attention to the proceedings 

 of her Majesty's Government as they are noted in 

 the dreary list of my representations and complaints 

 contained in the printed Memorandum furnished to 

 me with his Lordship's note of the 2d inst. ; when I 

 perceive real justice to have been so seldom done 

 and so often defeated, however good the intentions 

 may have been ; when I note the omission of all ref- 

 erence to the endless remonstrances made by myself 

 against the establishment of a naval bureau in Liver- 

 pool, conducted by insurgents mentioned and par- 

 ticularized by name ; because not a single step was 

 ever taken either to prevent their action or to punish 

 them I cannot but be sensible of a difference in the 

 preventive action of the two countries in similar cir- 

 cumstances, which would ever forbid me from classing 

 them together in one connection for a single moment. 



8. It is not, however, denied that, in the one case 

 as in the other, several cases of illegal outfits took 

 place which the existing laws proved i deficient to 

 prevent or punish. 



In that of the United States the representative of 

 the aggrieved Power made at once a direct appeal to 

 the Government, stating the cause of the difficulty, 

 and soliciting a new movement for the purpose of 

 obtaining from the requisite source stronger powers 

 of prevention; to which that Government imme- 

 diate! v responded by recognizing the justice of the 

 complaint, and at once adopting the suggestion. 



If her Majesty's Government has at any time in 

 this struggle followed that example, it has escaped 

 my observation. I should be glad to be corrected 

 when I affirm that it has done the directly opposite 

 thing. 



Here I may be permitted for a moment to refer tc 

 a passage of his Lordship's note, which appears to 

 have been called out by a hypothetical description I 

 ventured to give of the consequences that might ensue 

 to the world if neutral nations constituted themselves 

 the sole judges of the degree in which they had done 

 their duty under a code of their own making. To 

 this phrase his Lordship is pleased to retort as fol- 

 lows : 



Yet, as far as I can judge, your Secretaries of State always 

 maintained that the United States, as a neutral Power, were 

 the sole judges of the degree in which it had done its duty 

 under a code of its own making. 



To which I would beg permission to observe that 

 his Lordship can scarcely presume me to maintain 

 that, in the literal sense, my country does not make 

 its own code of laws. What I did mean to do, was 

 to distinguish by this term a country which was 

 ready to accept suggestions from Foreign Powers, 

 for an improvement of a code designed to give them 

 the protection they are entitled to by treaties as well 

 as by international law, from one which determined 

 to abide by its own system without regard to external 

 representations. By keeping in mind this distinction, 

 in connection with the fact already stated of the action 

 of my Government, it will then appear that his Lord- 

 ship is in error when he declares that " our Secre- 

 taries of State" (meaning those of the United States) 

 "made themselves the sole judges of the degree in 

 which the country had done its duty under a code of 

 their own making." So far was this from being true, 

 that they admitted that the country had not done its 

 full duty, and they proceeded to amend the code at 

 the suggestion of a Foreign Power that claimed to be 

 aggrieved. Hence it is that the "code" was "not 

 01 their own making." 



If there be a shadow of doubt left on this point, I 

 will proceed to disperse it by the following extracts : 



On the 20th of December, 1816, M. Correa de Cerra 

 addresses these words to the Secretary of State : 



I apply, therefore, to this Government, in the present 

 Instance, not to raise altercations, or to require satisfaction 

 which the Constitution of the United States has not perhaps 

 enabled them to give, but because I know that the supreme 

 Executive of this nation, all-powerful when supported by 

 law, is constitutionally inactive when unsupported by law. 

 What I solicit of him is the proposition to Congress of such 

 provisions by law as will prevent such attempts for the future. 



To which application Mr. Monroe, then Secretary 

 of State, replies as follows on the 27th of December, 



1816: 



I have communicated your letter to the President, and 

 have now the honor to transmit to you a copy of a messaga 

 which he has addressed to Congress on the subject, with a 

 view to obtain such an extension, by law, of the executive 

 power, as will be necessary to preserve the strict neutrality 

 of the United States in the existing war between Spain and 

 the Spanish Colonies, and effectually to guard against the 

 danger in regard to the vessels of your Sovereign which you 

 have anticipated. 



And on the 13th of March Mr. Rush, then Acting 

 Secretary, writes to him as follows : 



The act of Congress passed on the 8d of this month, to 

 preserve more effectually the neutral relations of the United 

 States, being upon the subject brought under consideration 

 In your letter to this department of the 20th December 

 last, I have the honor, by direction of the President, to trans- 

 mit for your information the enclosed copy of it. The Pi -e-i- 

 dent feels frure that your Sovereign will perceive In the spirit 

 and scope of its provisions a distinguished proof of the desiro 

 which animates this nation to maintain with his dominion! 

 and subjects the most harmonious relations. 



But when I turn to the other side of the picture, 

 and view the action which her Majesty's Government 

 has thought it proper to take in answer to siniibr 

 representations made by me on behalf of my Govern- 

 ment ; when I observe that the appeals to the existing 

 law have been almost uniformly of a kind to prove 

 its utter inefficiency; and when, upon my making 

 representations as to the expediency of further legis- 

 lation to enlarge the powers of the Government to an 



