Of all British markets the American was the most valuable; but next to the American market was that of the West Indies. In some respects the West Indian was of the two the better worth preserving. From head to foot the planters and their half-million negroes were always clad in cottons or linens made by the clothiers of Yorkshire, Wiltshire, or Belfast. Every cask and hoop, every implement and utensil, was supplied from the British Islands. The sailing of a West Indian convoy was “an epoch in the diary of every shop and warehouse throughout the Kingdom.”[232] The West Indian colonies employed, including the fisheries, above a thousand sail of shipping and twenty-five thousand seamen. While America might, and one day certainly would, manufacture for herself, the West Indies could not even dream of it; there the only profitable or practicable industry was cultivation of the soil, and the chief article of cultivation was the sugar-cane. Rival industries to those of Great Britain were impossible; the only danger that threatened British control was the loss of naval supremacy or the revolt of the negroes.
A great majority of British electors would certainly have felt no hesitation in deciding, as between the markets of the United States and of the West Indies, that if a choice must be made, good policy required the government to save at all hazards the West Indies. Both as a permanent market for manufactures and as a steady support for shipping, the West Indian commerce held the first place in British interests. This fact needed to be taken into account by the United States government before relying with certainty on the extent to which Great Britain could be controlled by the interests involved in the American trade. At the most critical moment all Jefferson’s calculations might be upset by the growth of a conviction in England that the colonial system was in serious danger; and to make this chance stronger, another anxiety was so closely connected with it as to cause incessant alarm in the British mind.
The carrying-trade between the French West Indies and Europe which had thus fallen into American hands, added to the natural increase of national exports and imports, required a large amount of additional shipping; and what was more directly hostile to English interests, it drew great numbers of British sailors into the American merchant-service. The desertion of British seamen and the systematic encouragement offered to deserters in every seaport of the Union were serious annoyances, which the American government was unable to excuse or correct. Between 1793 and 1801 they reached the proportions of a grave danger to the British service. Every British government packet which entered the port of New York during the winter before Jefferson’s accession to power lost almost every seaman in its crew; and neither people nor magistrates often lent help to recover them. At Norfolk the crew of a British ship deserted to an American sloop-of-war, whose commander, while admitting the fact, refused to restore the men, alleging his construction of official orders in his excuse.[233] In most American harbors such protection as the British shipmaster obtained sprang from the personal good-will of magistrates, who without strict legal authority consented to apply, for the benefit of the foreign master, the merchant-shipping law of the United States; but in one serious case even this voluntary assistance was stopped by the authority of a State government.
This interference was due to the once famous dispute over Jonathan Robbins, which convulsed party politics in America during the heated election of 1800. Thomas Nash, a boatswain on the British frigate “Hermione,” having been ringleader in conspiracy and murder on the high seas, was afterward identified in the United States under the name and with the papers of Jonathan Robbins of Danbury, in Connecticut. On a requisition from the British minister, dated June 3, 1799, he was delivered under the extradition clause of Jay’s treaty, and was hung. The Republican party, then in opposition, declared that Robbins, or Nash, was in their belief an American citizen whose surrender was an act of base subservience to Great Britain. An effigy of Robbins hanging to a gibbet was a favorite electioneering device at public meetings. The State of Virginia, having a similar grievance of its own, went so far as to enact a law[234] which forbade, under the severest penalties, any magistrate who acted under authority of the State to be instrumental in transporting any person out of its jurisdiction. As citizens of the Union, sworn to support the Constitution, such magistrates were equally bound with the Federal judges to grant warrants of commitment, under the Twenty-seventh Article of Jay’s treaty, against persons accused of specified crimes. The Virginia Act directly contravened the treaty; while indirectly it prevented magistrates from granting warrants against deserters and holding them in custody, so that every English vessel which entered a Virginia port was at once abandoned by her crew, who hastened to enter the public or private ships of the United States.[235]
The captain of any British frigate which might happen to run into the harbor of New York, if he went ashore, was likely to meet on his return to the wharf some of his boat’s crew strolling about the town, every man supplied with papers of American citizenship. This was the more annoying, because American agents in British ports habitually claimed and received the benefit of the British law; while so far as American papers were concerned, no pretence was made of concealing the fraud, but they were issued in any required quantity, and were transferred for a few dollars from hand to hand.
Not only had the encouragement to desertion a share in the decline of British shipping in American harbors, but it also warranted, and seemed almost to render necessary, the only countervailing measure the British government could employ. Whatever happened to the merchant-service, the British navy could not be allowed to suffer. England knew no conscription for her armies, because for centuries she had felt no need of general military service; but at any moment she might compel her subjects to bear arms, if circumstances required it. Her necessities were greater on the ocean. There, from time immemorial, a barbarous sort of conscription, known as impressment, had been the ordinary means of supplying the royal navy in emergencies; and every seafaring man was liable to be dragged at any moment from his beer-cellar or coasting-vessel to man the guns of a frigate on its way to a three-years’ cruise in the West Indies or the Mediterranean. Mere engagement in a foreign merchant-service did not release the British sailor from his duty. When the captain of a British frigate overhauled an American merchant-vessel for enemy’s property or contraband of war, he sent an officer on board who mustered the crew, and took out any seamen whom he believed to be British. The measure, as the British navy regarded it, was one of self-protection. If the American government could not or would not discourage desertion, the naval commander would recover his men in the only way he could. Thus a circle of grievances was established on each side. Pitt’s concessions to the United States irritated the British navy and merchant-marine, while they gave great profits to American shipping; the growth of American shipping stimulated desertions from the British service to the extent of injuring its efficiency; and these desertions in their turn led to a rigorous exercise of the right of impressment. To find some point at which this vicious circle could be broken was a matter of serious consequence to both countries, but most so to the one which avowed that it did not mean to protect its interests by force.
Great Britain could have broken the circle by increasing the pay and improving the condition of her seamen; but she was excessively conservative, and the burdens already imposed on her commerce were so great that she could afford to risk nothing. In the face of a combined navy like that of Spain and France, her control of the seas at any given point, such as the West Indies, was still doubtful; and in the face of American competition, her huge convoys suffered under great disadvantage. Conscious of her own power, she thought that the United States should be first to give way. Had the American government been willing to perform its neutral obligations strictly, the circle might have been broken without much trouble; but the United States wished to retain their advantage, and preferred to risk whatever England might do rather than discourage desertion, or enact and enforce a strict naturalization law, or punish fraud. The national government was too weak to compel the States to respect neutral obligations, even if it had been disposed to make the attempt.
The practice of impressment brought the two governments to a deadlock on an issue of law. No one denied that every government had the right to command the services of its native subjects, and as yet no one ventured to maintain that a merchant-ship on the high seas could lawfully resist the exercise of this right; but the law had done nothing to define the rights of naturalized subjects or citizens. The British government might, no doubt, impress its own subjects; but almost every British sailor in the American service carried papers of American citizenship, and although some of these were fraudulent, many were genuine. The law of England, as declared from time out of mind by every generation of her judges, held that the allegiance of a subject was indefeasible, and therefore that naturalization was worthless. The law of the United States, as declared by Chief-Justice Ellsworth in 1799, was in effect the same;[236] he held that no citizen could dissolve the compact of protection and defence between himself and society without the consent or default of the community. On both sides the law was emphatic to the point that naturalization could not bind the government which did not consent to it; and the United States could hardly require England to respect naturalization papers which the Supreme Court of the United States declared itself unable to respect in a similar case. Nevertheless, while courts and judges declare what the law is or ought to be, they bind only themselves, and their decisions have no necessary effect on the co-ordinate branches of government. While the judges laid down one doctrine in Westminster Hall, Parliament laid down another in St. Stephen’s chapel; and no one could say whether the law or the statute was final. The British statute-book contained Acts of Parliament as old as the reign of Queen Anne[237] to encourage the admission of foreign seamen into the British navy, offering them naturalization as an inducement. American legislation went not quite so far, but by making naturalization easy it produced worse results. A little perjury, in no wise unsafe, was alone required in order to transform British seamen into American citizens; and perjury was the commonest commodity in a seaport. The British government was forced to decide whether papers so easily obtained and transferred should be allowed to bar its claims on the services of its subjects, and whether it could afford to become a party to the destruction of its own marine, even though the United States should join with France and carry on endless war.
That there were some points which not even the loss of American trade would bring England to concede was well known to Jefferson; and on these points he did not mean to insist. Setting the matter of impressment aside, the relations between England and America had never been better than when the new President took office March 4, 1801. The British government seemed earnest in conciliation, and lost no opportunity of showing its good-will. Under the Sixth Article of Jay’s treaty, a commission had been appointed to settle long-standing debts due to British subjects, but held in abeyance by State legislation in contravention of the treaty of 1783. After long delays the commission met at Philadelphia and set to work, but had made little progress when the two American commissioners, with the President’s approval, in the teeth of the treaty which created the Board, refused to accept its decisions, and seceded. This violent measure was not taken by the Administration without uneasiness, for England might reasonably have resented it; but after some further delay the British government consented to negotiate again, and at last accepted a round sum of three million dollars in full discharge of the British claim. This was a case in which England was the aggrieved party; she behaved equally well in other cases where the United States were aggrieved. Rufus King complained that her admiralty courts in the West Indies and at Halifax were a scandal; in deference to his remonstrances these courts were thoroughly reformed by Act of Parliament. The vice-admiralty court at Nassau condemned the American brigantine “Leopard,” engaged in carrying Malaga wine from the United States to the Spanish West Indies. The American minister complained of the decision, and within three days the King’s Advocate reported in his favor.[238] The report was itself founded on Sir William Scott’s favorable decision in the case of the “Polly.” Soon afterward the American minister complained that Captain Pellew, of the “Cleopatra,” and Admiral Parker had not effectually restrained their subordinates on the American station; both officers were promptly recalled. Although the Ministry had not yet consented to make any arrangement on the practice of impressment, Rufus King felt much hope that they might consent even to this reform; meanwhile Lord Grenville checked the practice, and professed a strong wish to find some expedient that should take its place.
There was no reason to doubt the sincerity of the British Foreign Office in wishing friendship. Its policy was well expressed in a despatch written from Philadelphia by Robert Liston, the British minister, shortly before he left the United States to return home:[239]—