The National Intelligencer And Washington Advertiser

FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER

Observations on the conduct of Great Britain—Continued.

No. V.

Great Britain was not contented to make and execute her own anti-neutral orders of council and to give open indemnity for those breaches of public law, in the manner we have seen, but she used her utmost endeavors in the year 1793, to lead other powers into the adoption of those unprecedented and illegitimate provisions in her convention with Russia, which we have already noticed. Prussia, Austria, and Spain were drawn by England into similar engagements, and America, Genoa, and Tuscany immediately witnessed the separate or joint efforts of Great Britain and her lawless associates to coerce them into an injurious and degrading submission to this new English project of depriving the opposite belligerent of all the benefits of neutral commerce. Let it be well remembered, that this act was commenced, matured and published in London, under the official signatures of the British and Russian ministers on the 25th of March, 1793. There, then and thus was the unlawful foundation laid for all the subsequent violations of neutral rights by this great anti-neutral combination.

Let us suppose for a moment, that upon the receipt of that anglo-Russian treaty at Paris in the close of March, 1793, whereby the French were attempted to be deprived, by dint of naval power, of all rightful and legitimate intercourse with neutrals, the government of France had instantly avowed the right, the duty and the necessity of retaliating the measure, in form and substance, and had immediately passed legislative and executive acts, directing the total prevention of neutral intercourse with England and her dominions. No sober and honest American will doubt, question, or deny that such a law and decree of France in 1793 would have been justly chargeable to Great Britain, & that it would have been a clear, simple and mere retaliation on the part of the French. It requires but a little effort of a sound mind and an honest heart then to place to the account of the government of Great Britain the various infractions of our neutral rights by the governments of France and her allies, which have occurred since the dates of those numerous and stupendous violations of those rights in the years 1792, and 1793, which have been faithfully represented in the three former numbers of these papers,

"The law of nations," till England thus began, was the great charter of American peace—that peace the God of nature gave, and we estimate, as a most blessed fruit of his divine will. We had but to be just, and public happiness was ours! But alas, the scene is changed. The foundations of the law of nations have sustained from the hands of England, in her early treaties with Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Spain a rude and malignant stroke intended to destroy it—and with that law, to destroy our peace. If we trace the conduct of Great Britain, further and similar evidences but thicken around us.

Let us proceed in the painful, but necessary duty. In the progress of the war, Spain and all her allies, including England, were unable to protect her from the vigorous attacks, which this unprecedented engagement with England in 1793 brought upon her. She was forced to abandon her English connexion and to save herself from ruin by engaging on the side of France. No sooner had this new war of Spanish necessity taken place, than the English admiral, Nelson, published a proclamation, dated off Cadiz, declaring to the neutrals, that on that account, "It was found right that Spain should no longer have any trade!!!" The history of the civilized world never before witnessed an instance of a mere blockading admiral at a port, attempting to proclaim to all nations that a whole kingdom was no longer to have any trade, to the total, consequent and illegitimate destruction of neutral rights.

Will any man wonder, that powerful belligerent monarchs should, in retaliation, do half what a secondary English admiral had thus done many years before.

This strange and extravagant act of admiral Nelson's is a part of that monstrous and crude mass of British violations of neutral rights, which are to be found in the orders of their king in council, in the proclamations of their generals and admirals, and even in the acts of their parliament, under the two heads of

Blockades and Regulations of Neutral Trade.

These acts of the British government are in a great many very important instances, and far much the greater part, entirely unsupported by law or reason, in direct violation of the law of nations and indisputably injurious to neutral rights. As they apply to one important subject, they are most accurately, faithfully and ably characterized in the following concise summary of the English conduct, in the pamphlet (of 1806), written by Mr. Madison: a work which every neutral statesman and merchant, and every honest belligerent, should carefully read and well consider.

"The system of Great Britain (says this invaluable pamphlet) may therefore now be considered, as avowed and acted upon towards all the world, without disguise, and by the most solemn acts of her government. Her navy having destroyed the trade of her enemies, as well between the mother country and their colonies, as between the former and neutral countries, and her courts, by putting an end to re-exportations from neutral countries, reducing the importation into these to the mere amount of their own consumption, the immense surplus of productions accumulating in the American possessions of her enemies can find no outlet, but through the free ports" (of the British West Indies), "provided for it, nor any other market near the British market, and those to which she finds it her interest to distribute it : with a view to which she not only allows her enemies to trade with her possessions, but allows her subjects to trade with her enemies. And thus, in defiance as well of her treason laws, and of her laws of trade, as of the rights of neutrality, under the law of nations, we find her, in the just and emphatic language of the President, "taking to herself, by an inconsistency, at which reason revolts, a commerce with her own enemy, which she denies to a neutral, on the ground of its aiding an enemy in the war."

Could it have been credited of Great Britain or of any other respectable government, that they could have passed laws to promote and facilitate trade between the British dominions, (and by British subjects) with the dominions and ports of France, after entering into four solemn treaties with the great European states to prevent the neutrals from trading with those very French ports and dominions, under the penalty of a degrading and fatal confiscation?

Can it be expected by Great Britain, that the neutral world will for ever submit to the substitution of so monstrous a system of monopolizing inconsistency and oppression for the eternal justice of the law of nations.

The hostile influence of the government of Great Britain upon neutral trade, has been manifested in another form, particularly unjust, injurious and offensive. From the earliest time the British courts of admiralty have burdened both acquitted and condemned vessels with costs and charges, fatal to ordinary adventurers: and every shade of inconsistent opinion, from acquittal to condemnation in cases turning on the same principle, has marked the decrees of the judges themselves. The more high and proud are the claims of the British judiciary department to honor and confidence, in its dispensations at home, the deeper is the stain of such facts, in their administration of law to neutral suitors,

Such as we have stated in the several papers was the conduct of the British government towards her belligerent adversary and the neutral states, in the first months of the war of '93. So did she teach that adversary, by her own illegitimate example, to impede, to harass, to despoil, to mulct, to diminish, & to destroy the commerce of neutrals—so did she induce and teach Spain, Russia, Prussia and Austria. So did she coerce the U States, Genoa & Tuscany: and so did she attempt Denmark and Sweden. So did she still continue to act towards us in the month of November, 1806, when the government of France adopted its act of avowed and actual retaliation, For this act of France, erroneously supposed at the first to be a total prohibition of neutral trade with the British kingdoms, England sets up, against the universal law of nations, and a new formed treaty with the U. S. a pretension to a right to retaliate; profiting of her own wrong against the maxims of law, and the absolute rules of reason and justice.—The great original parent-aggressor and seducer of Europe, in the moment of a retaliation inferior far to her acts of provocation, and drawn by years of malconduct on herself, preposterously claims from that retaliation a right to repeat her innumerable malefactions against the most useful and necessary of her neutral friends! The law of nations she had long and often torn in public to miserable tatters, and our new treaty was not to bind her, because she had taught France her own new system of commercial blockade. On us, the written letter of the treaty articles and the old fashioned rules of the law of nations were to continue. absolutely obligatory. The treaty with England, tho suspended or annihilated there by a convenient rider of her dictation, was to be and continue "the supreme law of the land" in the U. S." Thus did England prove, that she had repeated her injuries till our apparent insensibility caused her to believe we had no feeling ; and that she had deceived us by the color of law in her council orders and of regularity in her pretended blockades; till we had no sense. The hopes of the two countries are brought now into a narrow ground, capable of fair and thorough explanation. We are two nations. Both independent. The universal prescriptive law of nations must govern both as to men and things. No dispensation can be claimed by either party; as of right. We can yield no solid provision of the law of nations, with safety or innocence. The times require of us an enlightened, a sincere, and an undaunted neutrality

JURISCOLA,