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shall be accepted by the British Government, the United States will be ready to concur in pressing its adoption on the court of France, and other maritime Powers, in such manner as may afford the fairest prospect of suc

cess.

In whatever degree His Majesty's Government may be disposed to receive this offer, as an acknowledgment that measures more efficient than any now generally in force, are indispensable for the suppression of the slave trade, it is not difficult to foresee, that fresh sentiments of regret will be excited, by. the unfavorable view which the American administration continues to take That meaof the principal measure suggested on the part of His Majesty. sure, you are well aware, Sir, is a mutual limited concession of the right of search; and though, as I have frequently stated, his Majesty's Government, in adopting it by treaty with several of the maritime Powers, and in recommending it with earnestness to the acceptance of others, particularly of the United States, have never opposed the consideration of any other plan brought forward as equally effective; yet having, from the first, regarded it in conscience as the only true and practical cure for the evil in question, they are naturally anxious, from a deep sense of duty, to place it in its proper light, and to guard it, as far as possible, from prejudice or misconception. I, therefore, deem it of importance, on this occasion, to bring into one point of view, the several limitations under which it is conceived, that the right of search might be so exercised, as to clear it of every imaginable difficulty. To give the intended limitations their just value, it is requisite to bear in mind the particular objections which have been urged against the interchange of a right of search; and for these, in their full extent, I can hardly be wrong in referring to your previous correspondence, since the last communication which I have received from you on this subject, though it describes the impressions of the American Government as remaining unaltered, does not exhibit any argument in support of their opinion.

In answer to that class of objections which relate to the mixed commissions established by treaty, between his Majesty and the courts of Lisbon, Brussels, and Madrid, it may suffice to remind you of the intimation, conveyed through Mr. Rush, in the early part of last year, which I had subsequently the honor of confirming at the Department of State. It might be expected, that any arrangement for the adjudication of vessels engaged in the slave trade, independent of those tribunals, would either leave the detained vessels to be disposed of in the ordinary way, by the sentence of a court of admiralty, in the country of the captor, or place them under the jurisdiction of a similar court in the country to which they belonged. On the former supposition, it is not to be anticipated that the United States could hesitate to admit the jurisdiction of a foreign court of admiralty, when sanctioned by mutual agreement, over the persons and property of citizens, abandoned to a pursuit so flagrantly iniquitous as to be classed by the Legislature of their country with crimes of the most heinous description, and which the American Government has declared its willingness to treat as piracy, under the law of nations. Great Britain, for her part, desires no other than that any of her subjects, who so far defy the laws, and dishonor the character of their country, as to engage in a trade of blood, proscribed not more by the acts of the legislature, than by the national feeling, should be detected and brought to justice, even by foreign hands, and from under the protection of her flag. In either of the supposed cases, it is clear that all impediments

connected with the forms of proceeding, and peculiar construction of the mixed commissions, would be completely avoided; and, with respect to any embarrassments attending the disposal of condemned vessels and liberated slaves, it has already been suggested by a committee of the House of Representatives that the provisions of the act of Congress passed the 3d of March, 1819, might be applied to them without difficulty or inconvenience.

The question being thus relieved from all connexion with the mixed com missions, every constitutional objection, arising out of their alleged incompatibility with the institutions of the United States, is at once removed from consideration. The remaining obstacles may be reduced under the following heads: the unpopularity of the right of search in this country; its tendency, if mutually employed, to produce an unfriendly collision between the two nations; and a certain supposed inequality, which would attend its exer

cise.

With respect to any doubt of its utility, created by a persuasion that very few vessels under American colors have been discovered, for some time past, on the coast of Africa, it requires but little reflection to prove that no conclusive inference can be drawn from that circumstance. Not to dwell upon the extent and nature of the slave coast, peculiarly favorable to the concealment of trading vessels, it must be remembered, that the United States have maintained, at no time, a greater number of cruizers than two, rarely more than one, and latterly, during several months together, no ship of war whatever, on the African station. As late as the 14th of January, 1822, it was stated, officially, by the Governor of Sierra Leone, "that the fine rivers Nunez and Pongas were entirely under the control of renegado European and American slave dealers."

But, if it were even manifest, that the active and judicious exertions of your naval officers, in that quarter, had really effected a total disuse of the American flag in slave trading, the right of search would still be most highly desirable, in order to secure and extend so important an advantage. As an example, indeed, to other Powers, particularly to France, whose subjects, encouraged by the loose and equivocal measures of their Government, are convicted, by a mass of evidence too strong to be resisted, of being concerned, to a deplorable degree, in this atrocious commerce, the concurrence of the the United States in asystem of which the very first result is to augment considerably the means of bringing offenders to justice, can hardly be rated at too high a value. The example which they are called upon to give, is not merely due to the claims of humanity: Great Britain and the United States are not only pledged to put down the slave trade, within the limits of their immediate jurisdiction; they are also bound, by solemn obligations, to employ their utmost endeavors for its complete and universal extermination. They have both succeeded in their great and benevolent object, so far as the rigor of legislative enactments is capable of counteracting the temptation of enormous proIt is fit, which stimulates the unprincipled avarice of the slave merchant. the facility of escaping detection, and not any want of severity in the punishment attached to a violation of their laws, which, as far as they are concerned, requires a more decisive remedy; and a remedy adequate to the evil can only be found in such measures as will strip the illicit trader of every disguise, and throw the chances entirely on the side of failure in his inhuman speculations. In the case of a search at sea, the means unavoidably employed in the commission of this crime are fortunately, it may be said providen

tially, of such a nature as in general to furnish a plain substantial body of proof for the conviction of the criminal.

For the satisfaction of those who seriously apprehend that the friendly relations subsisting between the two countries would be endangered by the admission of a practice which, in their opinion, must necessarily produce a vexatious exercise of authority on the part of the searching officer, and frequent complaints on that of the merchant whose vessel is subjected to search, with the supposed aggravation of an unequal pressure on one of the contracting parties, his Majesty's Government would, doubtless, agree to confine the right of visit to a fixed number of cruizers on each side, restricted, in the performance of this duty, to certain specified parts of the ocean, and acting under regulations, prepared by mutual consent, for the purpose preventing abuses. To these important limitations, if not deemed sufficient, others might easily be added; the arrangement, for example, might be temporarily, adopted, in the first instance, for a short period, and only to be continued in the event of its being found, on trial, to operate in a satisfactory manner. With this understanding, a speedy termination would at least be ensured to any objectionable result attending its operation; and, for the sake of interests so dear to humanity, an experiment, of which the advantage, as to its main object, is certain and complete, the inconvenience contingent and momentary, might surely be reconciled with a due regard to considerations exclusively national.

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Supposing that inconvenience should be found, in practice, to press unequally on either of the two parties, Great Britain, and not the United States, is most likely to have cause of complaint, inasmuch as the greater extent of her trade, especially on the coast of Africa, must naturally expose her, in a greater degree, to any injurious consequences of the agreement. Great Britain, however, is less disposed to shrink from any sacrifice, by which she can materially advance the sacred cause of abolition, than to lament, and if possible, to dispel those mistaken notions and unfounded jealousies, which deprive her exertions of their full effect, and serve, but too successfully, to protract the existence of a mischief which all unite in deploring. In point of principle, the honor of neither flag would be tarnished by having its protection withdrawn for a season from those who perpetrate the atrocities of the slave trade; and permit me, sir, to add, that what Great Britain is ready to allow, in a matter so vital to her pride and to her power, may surely be allowed, reciprocally, by any other nation, however scrupulous in the maintenance of its maritime independence.

That an agreement between our respective cabinets, founded on a mutual right of search, thus guarded and explained, would fail to obtain the consent of the American Senate, or that a nation so inquiring and enlightened as the United States would confound the proposed measure with that practice which afforded matter of painful contention during the last wars in Europe, is what I am extremely unwilling to anticipate. The two objects are, in fact, so totally distinct from each other, in principle, purpose, and mode of execution, that the proposal of the British Government need only be presented to the examination, I will not say of a select and experienced assembly, but of the people at large, in order to be seen in its true bearings.

So far is the British proposal from tending to commit the American Government on the long disputed question of the belligerent right of search, that, if it may be supposed to touch that question at all, it appears rather to operate in the sense of the United States than unfavorably for their view of the subject.

The officers entrusted on either side with the duty of examining suspected vessels, would necessarily act under instructions calculated to ensure a perfect harmony between the principle and the application of this conceded right; nor is it to be feared that they would presume, in any case, to extend the visit thus authorized at sea beyond the particular and specified object to which it is meant to be confined.

I have the honor to request, Sir, that you will again accept the assurance of my highest consideration..

Hon. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS,

Secretary of State, &c.

STRATFORD CANNING.

Mr. Adams to Mr. Canning.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, 24th June, 1823.

SIR: In the letter which I had the honor of addressing you on the 31st of March last, a proposal was made, to be submitted to the consideration of your Government, that the principle assumed in an act of the Congress of the United States, of 15th of May, 1820, of considering and punishing the African slave trade as piracy, should be adopted as the basis of a stipulation by treaty between the United States and Great Britain, and to be urged separately upon the adoption of France, and upon the other maritime nations of Europe, in the manner most conducive to its ultimate success. It was observed that this offer was presented as a substitute for that of conceding a mutual right of search, and a trial by mixed commissions, to which the United States could not be reconciled, and which would be rendered useless by it.

Your letter of the 8th of April, to which I have now the honor to reply, intimates that his Majesty's Government will be disposed to receive this offer only as an acknowledgment that measures more efficient than any now generally in force are indispensable for the suppression of the slave trade; and that, although they have never opposed the consideration of any other plan, brought forward as equally effective, yet, having from the first regarded a mutual limited concession of the right of search as the only true and practical cure for the evil, their prevailing sentiment will be of regret at the unfavorable view still taken of it by the Government of the United States. Your letter, therefore, urges a reconsideration of the proposal for this mutual concession of the right of search, and, by presenting important modifications of the proposal heretofore made, removes some of the objections which had been taken to it, as insuperable, while it offers argumentative answers to the others which had been disclosed in my previous communications on the subject to you.

In the treaties of Great Britain with Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, for the suppression of the slave trade, heretofore communicated, with the invitation to the United States to enter into similar engagements, three principles were involved, to neither of which the Government of the United States felt itself at liberty to accede. The first was the mutual concession of the right of search and capture, in time of peace, over merchant vessels, on the coast of Africa. The second was, the exercise of that right even over vessels under convoy of the public officers of their own nation; and the third

was the trial of the captured vessels by mixed commissions in colonial settlements, under no subordination to the ordinary judicial tribunals of the country to which the party brought before them for trial should belong. In the course of the correspondence relating to these proposals, it has been suggested that a substitute for the trial by mixed commissions might be agreed to; and in your letter of the 8th of April, an expectation is authorized, that an arrangement for the adjudication of the vessels detained, might leave them to be disposed of in the ordinary way, by the sentence of a Court of Admiralty in the country of the captor, or place them under the jurisdiction of a similar court in the country to which they belonged; to the former alternative of which you anticipate the unhesitating admission of the United States, in consideration of the aggravated nature of the crime, as acknowledged by their laws, which would be thus submitted to a foreign jurisdiction But it was precisely because the jurisdiction was foreign that the objection was taken to the trial by mixed commissions; and if it transcended the constitutional authority of the Government of the United States, to subject the persons, property, and reputation of their citizens, to the decisions of a court partly composed of their own countrymen, it might seem needless to remark, that the constitutional objection could not diminish, in proportion as its cause should increase, or that the power incompetent to make American citizens amenable to a court consisting one-half of foreigners, should be adequate to place their liberty, their fortune, and their fame, at the disposal of tribunals entirely foreign. I would further remark, that the sentence of a Court of Admiralty in the country of the captor is not the ordinary way by which the merchant vessels of one nation, taken on the high seas, by the officers of another, are tried in time of peace. There is, in the ordinary way, no right whatever existing, to take, to search, or even to board them; and I take this occasion to express the great satisfaction with which we have seen this principle solemnly recognised by the recent decision of a British Court of Admiralty. Nor is the aggravation of the crime for the trial of which a tribunal may be instituted, a cogent motive for assenting to the principle of subjecting American citizens, their rights and interests, to the decision of foreign courts; for, although Great Britain, as you remark, may be willing to abandon those of her subjects who defy the laws and tarnish the character of their country, by participating in this trade, to the dispensation of justice even by foreign hands, the United States are bound to remember that the power which enables a court to try the guilty authorizes them also to pronounce upon the fate of the innocent; and that the very question of guilt or innocence is that which the protecting care of their constitution has reserved for the citizens of this Union, to the exclusive decision of their own countrymen. This principle has not been departed from by the statute which has branded the slave trader with the name, and doomed him to the punishment of a pirate. The distinction between piracy by the law of nations, and piracy by statute, is well known and understood in Great Britain; and while the former subjects the transgressor guilty of it to the jurisdiction of any and every country into which he may be brought, or wherein he may be taken, the latter forms a part of the municipal criminal code of the country where it is enacted, and can be tried only by its own courts.

There remains the suggestion, that the slave trader captured under the mutual concession of the power to make the capture, might be delivered over to the jurisdiction of his own country. This arrangement would not be liable to the constitutional objection, which must ever apply to the jurisdiction

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