Answer. Not at all; because as long as we can build cheaper than other nations, we shall be employed in preference to others; besides, shall we permit the greatest part of the produce of our fields to rot on our hands, or lose half its value by subjecting it to high insurance, merely that our ship builders may have brisker employ? Shall the whole mass of our farmers be sacrificed to the class of ship wrights?
Objection. There will be collusive transfers of foreign ships to our merchants, merely to obtain for them the cover of our passports.
Answer. The same objection lies to giving passports to home-built vessels. They may be owned, and are owned by foreigners, and may be collusively re-transferred to our merchants to obtain our passports. To lessen the danger of collusion, however, I should be for delivering passports in our own ports only, if they were to be sent blank to foreign ports to be delivered there, the power of checking collusion would be small, and they might be employed to cover purposes of no benefit to us (which we ought not to countenance), and to throw our vessels out of business; but if issued only to vessels in our own ports, we can generally be certain that the vessel is our property; and always that the cargo is of our produce. State the case that it shall be found that all our shipping, home-built and foreign-built, is inadequate to the transportation of our produce to market; so that after all these are loaded, there shall yet remain produce on hand. This must be put into vessels owned by foreigners. Should these obtain collusively the protection of our passport, it will cover their vessel indeed, but it will cover also our cargo. I repeat it then, that if the issuing passports be confined to our ports, it will be our own vessels for the most part, and always our cargoes which will be covered by them.
I am, therefore, of opinion, that passports ought to be issued to all vessels belonging to citizens of the United States, but only on their clearing out from our own ports, and for that voyage only.
XXXVII.—Opinion relative to case of a British vessel captured by a French vessel, purchased by French citizens, and fitted out as a Privateer in one of our ports.
May 16, 1793.
The facts suggested, or to be taken for granted, because the contrary is not known, in the case now to be considered, are, that a vessel was purchased at Charleston, and fitted out as a privateer by French citizens, manned with foreigners chiefly, but partly with citizens of the United States. The command given to a French citizen by a regular commission from his government; that she has made prize of an English vessel in the open sea, and sent her into Philadelphia. The British minister demands restitution, and the question is, whether the Executive of the United States shall undertake to make it?
This transaction may be considered, 1st, as an offence against the United States; 2d, as an injury to Great Britain.
In the first view it is not now to be taken up. The opinion being, that it has been an act of disrespect to the jurisdiction of the United States, of which proper notice is to be taken at a proper time.
Under the second point of view, it appears to me wrong on the part of the United States (where not constrained by treaties) to permit one party in the present war to do what cannot be permitted to the other. We cannot permit the enemies of France to fit out privateers in our ports, by the 22d article of our treaty. We ought not, therefore, to permit France to do it; the treaty leaving us free to refuse, and the refusal being necessary to preserve a fair neutrality. Yet considering that the present is the first case which has arisen; that it has been in the first moment of the war, in one of the most distant ports of the United States, and before measures could be taken by the government to meet all the cases which may flow from the infant state of our government, and novelty of our position, it ought to be placed by Great Britain among the accidents of loss to which a nation is exposed in a state of war, and by no means as a premeditated wrong on the part of the government. In the last light it cannot be taken, because the act from which it results placed the United States with the offended, and not the offending party. Her minister has seen himself that there could have been on our part neither permission or connivance. A very moderate apology then from the United States ought to satisfy Great Britain.