THE ROARING FORTIES 115 



the high seas belongs to the ships of all na 

 tions at all times. 



These various arguments were iterated and 

 reiterated, amplified and fortified with the in 

 genuity and historical learning that the experts 

 in diplomacy and international law were readily 

 able to supply. The practical outcome so far 

 as concerned Great Britain and America was 

 determined, however, by popular feelings that 

 were independent of the reasoning on abstract 

 principles. In the United Kingdom the hu 

 manitarian sentiment against the slave-trade 

 pervaded all classes and demanded insistently 

 that the great naval power of the government 

 should be freely used for the suppression of the 

 evil. In the United States the memory of con 

 ditions during the Napoleonic wars was un 

 ceasingly active and prohibited any semblance 

 of recognition to the exercise of British juris 

 diction for any purpose on American vessels 

 on the high seas. There was a wide-spread 

 belief in the United States that the British 

 enthusiasm for the suppression of the slave- 

 trade covered a greater enthusiasm for main 

 taining the right of search as the unmistakable 

 token of her naval supremacy. Nor was this 

 belief without foundation; for in some centres 



