102 APPENDIX TO BRITISH CASE. 



of the Navy, whom I did not see. Called also on M. Otis at his 

 office, where I met Mr. Plumer. At the President's door I met 

 Mr. Israel Smith and M. Gaillard, who were on the same visit as 

 myself. The President mentioned a late act of hostility committed 

 by a French privateer near Charleston, South Carolina, and said that 

 we ought to assume as a principle that the neutrality of our territory 

 should extend to the Gulf Stream, which was a natural boundary, 

 and within which we ought not to suffer any hostility to be commit- 

 ted. M. Gaillard observed that on a former occasion, in Mr. Jeffer- 

 son's correspondence with Genest, and by an Act of Congress at that 



period, we had seemed only to claim the usual distance of 

 60 three miles from the coast; but the President replied that he 



had then assumed that principle because Genest by his intem- 

 perance forced us to fix on some point, and we were not then prepared 

 to assert the claim of jurisdiction to the extent we are in reason en- 

 titled to; but he had then taken care expressly to reserve the subject 

 for future consideration, with a view to this same doctrine for which 

 he now contends. I observed that it might be well, before we ven- 

 tured to assume a claim so broad, to wait for a time when we should 

 have a force competent to maintain it. But in the mean time, he said. 

 it was advisable to squint at it, and to accustom the nations of Europe 

 to the idea that we should claim it in future. The subject was not 

 pushed any farther. 



No. 11. 1806, May 17: Extract from Letter from Mr. Madison 

 (United States Secretary of State] to Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney 

 (Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States 

 in London). 



******* 



There remains, as an object of great importance, some adequate 

 provision against the insults and injuries committed by British 

 cruisers in the vicinity of our shores and harbours. These have been 

 heretofore a topic of remonstrance, and have, in a late instance, been 

 repeated with circumstances peculiarly provoking, as they include the 

 murder of an American seaman within the jurisdictional limits of 

 the United States. Mr. Monroe is in full possession of the documents 

 explaining a former instance. Herewith will be received those relat- 

 ing to the late one. They not only support a just demand of an 

 exemplary punishment of the offenders, and of indemnity for the 

 spoliations, but call for some stipulations guarding against such out- 

 rages in future. With this view, it is proper that all armed belliger- 

 ent ships should be expressly and effectually restrained from making 

 seizures or searches within a certain distance from our coasts, or 

 taking stations near our harbours commodious for those purposes. 



In defining the distance protected against belligerent proceedings, 

 it would not, perhaps, be unreasonable, considering the extent of the 

 United States, the shoalness of their coast, and the natural indica- 

 tion furnished by the well defined path of the Gulf Stream, to ex- 

 pect an immunity for the space between that limit nnd the American 

 shore. But at least it mav be insisted that the extent of the neutral 



