Animated by an ardent desire to suppress this trade, the United States took stronger ground by making it, by the act above referred to, piratical, a measure more adequate to the end and free from many of the objections applicable to the plan which had been proposed to them. It is this alternative which the Executive, under the sanction and injunctions above stated, offered to the British Government, and which that Government has accepted. By making the crime piracy the right of search attaches to the crime, and which when adopted by all nations will be common to all; and that it will be so adopted may fairly be presumed if steadily persevered in by the parties to the present convention. In the meantime, and with a view to a fair experiment, the obvious course seems to be to carry into effect with every power such treaty as may be made with each in succession.
In presenting this alternative to the British Government it was made an indispensable condition that the trade should be made piratical by act of Parliament, as it had been by an act of Congress. This was provided for in the convention, and has since been complied with. In this respect, therefore, the nations rest on the same ground. Suitable provisions have also been adopted to protect each party from the abuse of the power granted to the public ships of the other. Instead of subjecting the persons detected in the slave trade to trial by the courts of the captors, as would be the case if such trade was piracy by the laws of nations, it is stipulated that until that event they shall be tried by the courts of their own country only. Hence there could be no motive for an abuse of the right of search, since such abuse could not fail to terminate to the injury of the captor.
Should this convention be adopted, there is every reason to believe that it will be the commencement of a system destined to accomplish the entire abolition of the slave trade. Great Britain, by making it her own, confessedly adopted at the suggestion of the United States, and being pledged to propose and urge its adoption by other nations in concert with the United States, will find it for her interest to abandon the less-effective system of her previous treaties with Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and to urge on those and other powers their accession to this. The crime will then be universally proscribed as piracy, and the traffic be suppressed forever.
Other considerations of high importance urge the adoption of this convention. We have at this moment pending with Great Britain sundry other negotiations intimately connected with the welfare and even the peace of our Union. In one of them nearly a third part of the territory of the State of Maine is in contestation. In another the navigation of the St. Lawrence, the admission of consuls into the British islands, and a system of commercial intercourse between the United States and all the British possessions in this hemisphere are subjects of discussion. In a third our territorial and other rights upon the northwest coast are to be adjusted, while a negotiation on the same interest is opened with Russia. In a fourth all the most important controvertible points of maritime law in time of war are brought under consideration, and in the fifth the whole system of South American concerns, connected with a general recognition of South American independence, may again from hour to hour become, as it has already been, an object of concerted operations of the highest interest to both nations and to the peace of the world.
It can not be disguised that the rejection of this convention can not fail to have a very injurious influence on the good understanding between the two Governments on all these points. That it would place the Executive Administration under embarrassment, and subject it, the Congress, and the nation to the charge of insincerity respecting the great result of the final suppression of the slave trade, and that its first and indispensable consequence will be to constrain the Executive to suspend all further negotiation with every European and American power to which overtures have been made in compliance with the resolution of the House of Representatives of 28th February, 1823, must be obvious. To invite all nations, with the statute of piracy in our hands, to adopt its principles as the law of nations and yet to deny to all the common right of search for the pirate, whom it would be impossible to detect without entering and searching the vessel, would expose us not simply to the charge of inconsistency.
It must be obvious that the restriction of search for pirates to the African coast is incompatible with the idea of such a crime. It is not doubted also if the convention is adopted that no example of the commission of that crime by the citizens or subjects of either power will ever occur again. It is believed, therefore, that this right as applicable to piracy would not only extirpate the trade, but prove altogether innocent in its operation.
In further illustration of the views of Congress on this subject, I transmit to the Senate extracts from two resolutions of the House of Representatives, one of the 9th February, 1821, the other of 12th April, 1822. I transmit also a letter from the chargé d'affaires of the British Government, which shows the deep interest which that Government takes in the ratification of the treaty.
JAMES MONROE.
WASHINGTON CITY, May 22, 1824.
To the House of Representatives of the United States: