While the war was waging, the subject was still discussed. Mr. Grundy, of Tennessee, in the House of Representatives, in a report from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, said:—
“A subaltern or any other officer of the British navy ought not to be arbiter in such a case. The liberty and lives of American citizens ought not to depend on the will of such a party.”[54]
Such was the American ground, occupied from the beginning without interruption, and from the beginning most persistently contested by Great Britain.
The British pretension was unhesitatingly proclaimed in the Declaration of the Prince Regent, afterwards George the Fourth, given at the palace of Westminster, January 9, 1813.
“The President of the United States has, it is true, since proposed to Great Britain an armistice: not, however, on the admission that the cause of war hitherto relied on was removed, but on condition that Great Britain, as a preliminary step, should do away a cause of war now brought forward as such for the first time,—namely, that she should abandon the exercise of her undoubted right of search to take from American merchant vessels British seamen, the natural-born subjects of His Majesty.…
“His Royal Highness can never admit, that, in the exercise of the undoubted and hitherto undisputed right of searching neutral merchant vessels in time of war, the impressment of British seamen, when found therein, can be deemed any violation of a neutral flag. Neither can he admit that the taking such seamen from on board such vessels can be considered by any neutral state as a hostile measure or a justifiable cause of war.”[55]
In the semi-official counter statement presented by Alexander J. Dallas, at the time Secretary of the Treasury, entitled “Exposition of the Causes and Character of the late War,” this pretension is thus described:—
“But the British claim, expanding with singular elasticity, was soon found to include a right to enter American vessels on the high seas, in order to search for and seize all British seamen; it next embraced the case of every British subject; and finally, in its practical enforcement, it has been extended to every mariner who could not prove upon the spot that he was a citizen of the United States.”[56]
The war was closed by the Treaty at Ghent; but, perversely, the British pretension was not renounced. Other negotiations, in 1818 under President Monroe, in 1823 also under Monroe, and again in 1827 under John Quincy Adams, expressly to procure its renunciation, were all unavailing. Of these various negotiations I forbear all details; but the language of Mr. Rush, our Minister at London, who pressed this question assiduously for several years, beginning with 1818, should not be omitted. The case was never stated more strongly.
“Let the steps by which the enforcement proceeds be attended to. A British frigate, in time of war, meets an American merchant vessel at sea, boards her, and, under terror of her guns, takes out one of the crew. The boarding lieutenant asserts, and, let it be admitted, believes, the man to be a Briton. By this proceeding the rules observed in deciding upon any other fact, where individual or national rights are at stake, are overlooked. The lieutenant is accuser and judge. He decides upon his own view, instantly. The impressed man is forced into the frigate’s boat, and the case ends. There is no appeal, no trial of any kind; more important still, there is no remedy, should it appear that a wrong has been committed.”[57]