Yeas.—Messrs. Adams, Anderson, Baldwin, Bayard, Gaillard, Gilman, Hillhouse, Howland, Kitchel, Logan, Maclay, Mitchill, Moore, Pickering, Smith of Maryland, Smith of New York, Smith of Ohio, Smith of Tennessee, Tracy, Turner, White, Worthington, and Wright.Nays.—Messrs. Adair, Bradley, Plumer, Smith of Vermont, Stone, Sumter, and Thruston.
Yeas.—Messrs. Adams, Anderson, Baldwin, Bayard, Gaillard, Gilman, Hillhouse, Howland, Kitchel, Logan, Maclay, Mitchill, Moore, Pickering, Smith of Maryland, Smith of New York, Smith of Ohio, Smith of Tennessee, Tracy, Turner, White, Worthington, and Wright.
Nays.—Messrs. Adair, Bradley, Plumer, Smith of Vermont, Stone, Sumter, and Thruston.
So it wasResolved, That the President of the United States be requested to demand the restoration of the property of their citizens captured and condemned on the pretext of its being employed in a trade with the enemies of Great Britain, prohibited in a time of peace; and the indemnification of such American citizens, for their losses and damages sustained by these captures and condemnations; and to enter into such arrangements with the British Government, on this and all other differences subsisting between the two nations, (and particularly respecting the impressment of American seamen,) as may be consistent with the honor and interests of the United States, and manifest their earnest desire to obtain for themselves and theircitizens, by amicable negotiation, that justice to which they are entitled.
The following Message was received from thePresident of the United States:
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:In pursuance of a measure proposed to Congress, by a Message of January 18th, 1803, and sanctioned by their approbation, for carrying it into execution, Captain Meriwether Lewis, of the first regiment of infantry, was appointed, with a party of men, to explore the river Missouri from its mouth to its source, and crossing the high lands by the shortest portage, to seek the best water communication thence to the Pacific Ocean; and Lieutenant Clarke was appointed second in command. They were to enter into conference with the Indian nations on their route, with a view to the establishment of commerce with them. They entered the Missouri, May 14, 1804, and on the 1st of November, took up their winter quarters near the Mandan towns, sixteen hundred and nine miles above the mouth of the river, in latitude 47° 21´ 47´´ north, and longitude 99° 24´ 45´´ west, from Greenwich. On the 8th of April, 1805, they proceeded up the river in pursuance of the objects prescribed to them. A letter of the preceding day, April 7, from Captain Lewis, is herewith communicated. During his stay among the Mandans, he has been able to lay down the Missouri, according to courses and distances taken on his passage up it, corrected by frequent observations of longitude and latitude, and to add to the actual survey of this portion of the river, a general map of the country between the Mississippi and Pacific, from the 34th to the 54th degrees of latitude. These additions are from information collected from Indians, with whom he had opportunities of communicating during his journey, and residence with them. Copies of this map are now presented to both Houses of Congress. With these, I communicate, also a statistical view, procured and forwarded by him, of the Indian nations inhabiting the Territory of Louisiana and the countries adjacent to its northern and western borders, and of other interesting circumstances respecting them.TH. JEFFERSON.February 19, 1806.
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:
In pursuance of a measure proposed to Congress, by a Message of January 18th, 1803, and sanctioned by their approbation, for carrying it into execution, Captain Meriwether Lewis, of the first regiment of infantry, was appointed, with a party of men, to explore the river Missouri from its mouth to its source, and crossing the high lands by the shortest portage, to seek the best water communication thence to the Pacific Ocean; and Lieutenant Clarke was appointed second in command. They were to enter into conference with the Indian nations on their route, with a view to the establishment of commerce with them. They entered the Missouri, May 14, 1804, and on the 1st of November, took up their winter quarters near the Mandan towns, sixteen hundred and nine miles above the mouth of the river, in latitude 47° 21´ 47´´ north, and longitude 99° 24´ 45´´ west, from Greenwich. On the 8th of April, 1805, they proceeded up the river in pursuance of the objects prescribed to them. A letter of the preceding day, April 7, from Captain Lewis, is herewith communicated. During his stay among the Mandans, he has been able to lay down the Missouri, according to courses and distances taken on his passage up it, corrected by frequent observations of longitude and latitude, and to add to the actual survey of this portion of the river, a general map of the country between the Mississippi and Pacific, from the 34th to the 54th degrees of latitude. These additions are from information collected from Indians, with whom he had opportunities of communicating during his journey, and residence with them. Copies of this map are now presented to both Houses of Congress. With these, I communicate, also a statistical view, procured and forwarded by him, of the Indian nations inhabiting the Territory of Louisiana and the countries adjacent to its northern and western borders, and of other interesting circumstances respecting them.
TH. JEFFERSON.
February 19, 1806.
The Senate resumed the third reading of the bill to suspend the commercial intercourse between the United States and the French island of St. Domingo.
Mr.White.—Mr. President, it will be recollected that the bill, as originally introduced on this subject by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, (Mr.Logan,) was variant in every shape and feature from that now before us. The first bill I considered altogether impotent, and had little or no concern as to its fate; but that now under consideration, as presented by the committee, is of a very different complexion, and goes the full length of interdicting all commerce between this country and the island of St. Domingo.
Our local situation, Mr. President, gives to us advantages in the commerce of the West Indies over all the nations of the world; and it is not only the right and the interest, but it is the duty of this Government, by every fair and honorable means, to protect and encourage our citizens in the exercise of those advantages. If, in other respects, we pursue a wise policy, and remain abstracted from the convulsions of Europe, that for many years to come are not likely to have much interval; enjoying, as we shall, all the advantages of peace-wages, peace-freight, peace-insurance, and the other peace privileges of neutral traders, we must nearly acquire a monopoly of this commerce. We can make usually a treble voyage; that is, from this continent to the West Indies, thence to Europe, and back to America again, in the time that the European vessels are engaged in one West India voyage. This circumstance of itself, properly improved, at a period perhaps not very remote, whenever others of those islands may be released from, or refuse longer submission to their present colonial restrictions upon commerce, will enable us to rival even the British in transporting to the markets of Europe the very valuable productions of the West Indies, such as sugar, molasses, coffee, spirits, &c. Again, sir, I state nothing new when I say that the produce of this country is essential to the West India islands, and the facility with which we can convey it to them, must at all times enable us to furnish them much cheaper than they can be furnished by any other people. It requires not indeed the spirit of prophecy to foretell, that the time must come when the very convenient and commanding situation we occupy, in every point of view, relative to the most valuable of those islands, will place in our hands the entire control of their trade; that is, if we pursue a wise and politic system of measures in relation to them; holding fast upon all the great advantages nature has given us, and promptly availing ourselves of such others as circumstances may throw in our way. As a source of public revenue; as a means of increasing our national capital; and, though last, not least, as a nursery for our seamen, the importance of this commerce to the United States is incalculable, and should be guarded with a jealous eye; we should never suffer our rightful participation in it to be diminished by others, much less have the folly to diminish it ourselves. Those islands are situated in our very neighborhood, and but for the arbitrary colonial restrictions upon commerce, to which they are now subject, no other nation could hold a successful competition with us in their markets, unless some such ill-judged, baleful, anti-commercial measure, as has now fallen to the genius of the gentleman from Pennsylvania to contrive, should enable them to do so.
I will now, sir, notice the relative hostile situations of France and St. Domingo, and see how far gentlemen are borne out in their positions—that the people of St. Domingo can beconsidered only as revolted slaves, or, at best, as French subjects now in a state of rebellion; that they are nationally in no respect separated from France; that to trade with them is a violation of the laws of nations, and that we have no right to do so. This, so far as I could understand them, forms a summary of the points that have been urged in support of the present measure, and in opposition to the trade; each of which deserves some attention. If I am wrong in these points, the friends of the bill will please now to correct me; and I hope gentlemen will become convinced during the discussion, that the case which so many of them have stated, of any foreign power succoring and protecting the revolted slaves of the Southern States, is not the parallel of that before us. As to the first point, it is to be recollected, that some years past, to quote from high authority, “during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long lost liberties,” when our enlightened sister Republic of France was, in her abundant kindness, forcing liberty upon all the world, and propagating the rights of man at the point of the bayonet, in one of her paroxysms of philanthropy, she proclaimed, by a solemn decree of her Convention, the blessings of liberty and equality to the blacks of St. Domingo too; invited them to the fraternal embrace, and to the honors of a Conventional sitting. The wisdom or the policy of this proceeding, it is not my business to inquire into, but it certainly affords some excuse, if any be necessary, for the subsequent conduct of those unfortunate people. The decree abolishing for ever slavery in the West Indies, (French,) and extending all the blessings of citizenship and equality to every human creature, of whatever grade or color, then under the Government of France, passed the Convention in February, seventeen hundred and ninety-four. The existence of such a paper I did not expect would have been doubted here till the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Kitchel) actually denied it. In the new Annual Register, of ninety-four, is the following account of it, page 347: “La Croix rose to move the entire abolition of slavery in the dominions of France. The National Convention rose spontaneously to decree the proposition of La Croix. On motion of Danton, on the 5th, the Convention resolved to refer to the Committee of Public Safety the decree of emancipation, in order that they might provide the most effectual and safest means of carrying it into effect.” But here is the decree itself, as taken from the Gentleman’s Magazine, and furnished to me by a friend: “National Convention, 1794, February 4th. The National Convention decrees that slavery is abolished in all the French colonies. It decrees in consequence that all the inhabitants of the French colonies, of whatever color, are French citizens, and from this day forward shall enjoy those rights which are secured to them by the declaration of rights, and by the constitution.” And this same principle the Convention frequently recognized, by receiving at their bar, in the most complimentary manner, various deputations of blacks from the West Indies, thanking them for the boon conferred upon them. One of these instances, among many others, I will submit, as a curiosity in legislative proceedings, to the Senate: “National Convention. Order of the day. A band of blacks of both sexes, amidst the sound of martial music; and escorted by a great band of Parisians, came into the hall to return thanks to the Legislature for having raised them to the rank of men. The President gave the fraternal kiss to an old negress, 114 years old, and mother of eleven children. After which she was respectfully conducted to an armed chair and seated by the side of the President, amid the loudest bursts of applause.” By the original decree, the liberty of the blacks was established. This ceremony, it seems, was only to show their equality; and certainly, sir, the President could not have given a much stronger, or a much kinder evidence of it to the old lady. But, Mr. President, the claim of those people to freedom does not rest here. I have in my hand a document of much more recent date, and even more to be relied upon. It is the proclamation of the then First Consul, now the Emperor and King, to the people of St. Domingo, when General Le Clerc went there, in the winter of 1801, at the head of the French forces, which I will read. First, a short proclamation of General Le Clerc’s:
LIBERTY. EQUALITY.PROCLAMATION.On board the Ocean, off the Cape, the 15th of Pluviose, 10th year of the French Republic, (Feb. 6, 1802.)Le Clerc, General-in-chief of the Army of St. Domingo, Captain General of the Colony, to the inhabitants of St. Domingo:Inhabitants of St. Domingo! Read the proclamation of the First Consul of the Republic. It assures to the blacks that liberty for which they have so long fought; to commerce and to agriculture that prosperity without which there can be no colonies. His promises will be faithfully fulfilled; to doubt it would be a crime.The General-in-chief,LE CLERC,Captain General.By order of the General-in-chief,LENOIR.
LIBERTY. EQUALITY.
PROCLAMATION.
On board the Ocean, off the Cape, the 15th of Pluviose, 10th year of the French Republic, (Feb. 6, 1802.)
Le Clerc, General-in-chief of the Army of St. Domingo, Captain General of the Colony, to the inhabitants of St. Domingo:
Inhabitants of St. Domingo! Read the proclamation of the First Consul of the Republic. It assures to the blacks that liberty for which they have so long fought; to commerce and to agriculture that prosperity without which there can be no colonies. His promises will be faithfully fulfilled; to doubt it would be a crime.
The General-in-chief,
LE CLERC,Captain General.
By order of the General-in-chief,
LENOIR.
Extract from the Register of the Deliberations of the Consuls of the Republic, Paris, the 17th Brumaire, 10th year of the French Republic, one and indivisible, (November 8, 1801.)PROCLAMATION.The Consuls of the Republic to the Inhabitants of St. Domingo.Inhabitants of St. Domingo! Whatever may be your origin and your color, ye are all Frenchmen; ye are all free, and all equal before God and the Republic.France, like St. Domingo, has been a prey to factions, and torn by civil and foreign wars. But all ischanged! Every people have embraced Frenchmen, and have sworn to them peace and friendship! All Frenchmen have likewise embraced each other, and have sworn to be all friends and brothers. Come ye, also, and embrace Frenchmen, and rejoice to see your friends and your brothers of Europe.The Government sends you the Captain General, Le Clerc. He carries with him great forces to protect you against your enemies, and against the enemies of the Republic. If it should be told you these forces are intended to tear from you your liberty, answer, the Republic has given us liberty. The Republic will not suffer that it should be taken from us. Rally round the Captain General; he restores you abundance and peace. Rally round him; he who shall dare to separate himself from the Captain General will be a traitor to his country, and the vengeance of the Republic shall devour him as fire devours your dried canes.Given at Paris, in the palace of Government, the 17th Brumaire, 10th year of the French Republic.BONAPARTE.By the First Consul,H. B. Maret,Secretary.A true copy,Le Clerc,Captain General.
Extract from the Register of the Deliberations of the Consuls of the Republic, Paris, the 17th Brumaire, 10th year of the French Republic, one and indivisible, (November 8, 1801.)
PROCLAMATION.
The Consuls of the Republic to the Inhabitants of St. Domingo.
Inhabitants of St. Domingo! Whatever may be your origin and your color, ye are all Frenchmen; ye are all free, and all equal before God and the Republic.
France, like St. Domingo, has been a prey to factions, and torn by civil and foreign wars. But all ischanged! Every people have embraced Frenchmen, and have sworn to them peace and friendship! All Frenchmen have likewise embraced each other, and have sworn to be all friends and brothers. Come ye, also, and embrace Frenchmen, and rejoice to see your friends and your brothers of Europe.
The Government sends you the Captain General, Le Clerc. He carries with him great forces to protect you against your enemies, and against the enemies of the Republic. If it should be told you these forces are intended to tear from you your liberty, answer, the Republic has given us liberty. The Republic will not suffer that it should be taken from us. Rally round the Captain General; he restores you abundance and peace. Rally round him; he who shall dare to separate himself from the Captain General will be a traitor to his country, and the vengeance of the Republic shall devour him as fire devours your dried canes.
Given at Paris, in the palace of Government, the 17th Brumaire, 10th year of the French Republic.
BONAPARTE.
By the First Consul,
H. B. Maret,Secretary.
A true copy,
Le Clerc,Captain General.
This, sir, is proof irresistible; after which it can never be said that the liberation of those people has been the rash act, or the mere ebullition, of the heat and convulsion of a revolution. We have here their liberty solemnly recognized and proclaimed to the world eight years afterwards by the man who was then and still is at the head of the French Government; or rather, who is now the Government itself. I cite these papers to show that the French have now no claim, either in right, in justice, or in law, to any portion of the people of St. Domingo as slaves; that they are individually free, if the highest authorities in France could constitute them so, which will surely not be questioned; and in order to rebut a fallacious idea that has been taken up, and urged by some, that our merchants are conducting this commerce with slaves, the property of freemen, and not with freemen themselves, thus ingeniously endeavoring to draw a distinction between the situation of St. Domingo and that of any other colony that has ever heretofore attempted to separate itself from the mother country; to make theirs, according to the language of the gentleman from Virginia, (Mr.Moore,) a totally new, unprecedented case, and in this manner to take them out of the humane provisions of the laws of nations. I grant, sir, their case does form a distinction from any other, and in this it consists: the people of St. Domingo are fighting to preserve not only their independence as a community, but their liberty as individuals; to prevent a degradation from the exalted state of freemen to the debased condition of slaves, struggling against the manacles that have been forged for them by the lawless ambition of power. We are told, however, they are at least not free as a people, as a body politic; but in such a state of rebellion that no nation has a right to trade with them.
Let us now, Mr. President, attend to the present state of St. Domingo; but first to the circumstances that have led to it, and see how far this doctrine will apply. After the bands of the political society that had connected France and her colonies together were broken asunder; when the old Government of that country was completely dissolved, and one usurpation succeeded day after day to the places and to the vices of another; when the axe of the guillotine had extinguished the magic lustre of royalty, and even that grace and beauty, [a very superb likeness of the late Queen of France was hanging directly before him,] that had reigned so long unrivalled, the pride and idol of the nation, had to yield herself to the rudeness of a common executioner, and was humbled in death before a scoffing multitude; when the constitution that had been recently established by the voice of the nation, and under which it was hoped they would flourish and be happy, had fallen into the ruthless fangs of the Jacobins, and the patriots who supported it had found refuge in exile, or mingled their blood upon the scaffold; when all rightful, civil, and legal authority was at an end, and the Revolutionary sabre alone gave law, the people of St. Domingo, as did the people of these States under other circumstances, declared themselves free and independent, determined to take their stand among the nations of the world, and now refuse allegiance to any foreign power. They have organized a Government for themselves; they arede factothe governors of the country, and in every respect act as an independent people. They have waged, and carried on with France, for many years, a most serious war, in defence of what they say are their rights; and the French, by force of arms, have been endeavoring to subjugate them. And now let me ask if the United States, or any other power upon earth, is competent to decide this great controversy between them? They each claim to be free and independent, and therefore acknowledge no superior; the struggle is between themselves, and no other nation has a right to interfere by direct acts of hostility, or by any commercial restrictions that can go to effect injuriously either of the parties, and to do so is a departure from neutral ground, and an infraction of the laws of nations, as I think will be within my power to show from the most incontestable authorities. For this purpose I will advert again toVattel.
Vattel, b. 2, ch. 4, sec. 56, says: “When the bands of the political society are broken, or at least suspended between the sovereign and his people, the contending parties may then be considered as two distinct powers; and since they are both equally independent of all foreign authority, nobody has a right to judge between them. Either may be in the right.” B. 3, ch. 15, sec. 295, says: “When a nation becomes divided into two parties absolutely independent, and no longer acknowledging a common superior, the State is dissolved, and the war betweenthe two parties stands on the same ground in every respect as a public war between two different nations.” Again, sir, section 293 of the same book and chapter says: “A civil war breaks the bands of society and Government, or at least suspends their force and effect. It produces in the nation two independent parties, who consider each other as enemies, and acknowledge no common judge. Those two parties, therefore, must necessarily be considered as thenceforward constituting, at least for a time, two separate bodies, two distinct societies. Though one of the parties may have been to blame in breaking the unity of the State, and resisting the lawful authority, they are not the less divided in fact. Besides, who shall judge them? Who shall pronounce on which side the right or the wrong belongs? On earth they have no common superior. They stand, therefore, in precisely the same predicament as two nations who engage in a contest, and, being unable to come to an agreement, have recourse to arms.”
We have been exultingly told by Mr. Talleyrand, and it has been echoed from this Chamber by the gentleman from New York, (Mr.Mitchill,) that even the British consider St. Domingo a colony of France, and upon this principle condemn our vessels for trading there. I grant that such a pretext, among many others, has been resorted to in order to destroy our commerce; I grant that such an infringement of our neutral rights has been committed, and the reasons that have induced it must be obvious to the most superficial observer. The British, with a monopoly of this commerce themselves, and those same Englishmen who now condemn our vessels for trading to St. Domingo, upon the ground of its being a French colony, heretofore, when it suited their purposes, so far acknowledged the independence of those very people as to enter into a Commercial Treaty with them, and are now not only in the constant practice of trading there themselves, but of granting licenses to others to do so. I hope, however, the day has not come when our commerce is to be under the control of the Lords of the Admiralty, or our national rights dependent upon the judicial opinions of Sir William Scott; and the learned gentleman from New York must indeed have been pressed with the barrenness of his case when he had to resort to such an argument, derived from such a source. The gentleman from New Jersey, (Mr.Kitchel,) I must in candor say, has, in support of the present measure, assumed premises totally new and different. His reasons, like most of those we have been accustomed lately to hear, were in the true style of modern legislation, enveloped in all the mysteries of secrecy. He tells us that we had better give up this commerce, because it is not valuable. Where the gentleman obtained this piece of information is utterly beyond the comprehension of my understanding: none such, certainly, has ever been laid before us; nor did he condescend to give us a clue to its source; but as if sufficient to urge it upon our faith with all the confidence of apostolic inspiration—to us who doubted, he refused even an opportunity of acquiring knowledge through any other channel; voted against the propositions of my friend and colleague, which went to ask of the Executive the actual state of this commerce, and to ascertain its real value. To do strict justice to the gentleman’s argument, it is simply this, that whenever any foreign power may please to demand of us the surrender of a right, however just and honest it may be; however it may comport with the dignity of the Government to preserve it; if, in a pecuniary point of view, if upon a cool peddling calculation of risk, profit, and loss, it cannot be deemed of high value, we are at once to give it up. This argument, I will confess, is worthy of the bill. So striking, and of such a kind is their affinity, that they seem peculiarly calculated to expose each other, and to excite in every mind valuing the honor, the dignity, and the character of the nation, like sentiments of disgust. The case cited by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, (Mr.Maclay,) of the Indians, I think in 1755, under the avowed authority, direction, and support of the French Government, ravaging our frontiers, surely can have no relation to the question before us. Has this Government ever furnished arms and ammunition, or done any other act in order to assist and encourage the people of St. Domingo in attacking the countries of their neighbors? I cannot conceive what subject that might have been before Congress during our present session, the gentleman must have had in his mind, to which he supposed this case could apply; certainly not the present; it is infinitely more distant in point of analogy than of date. I have been exerting my imagination to discern any object or bearing it can have, that I might endeavor to meet it, but the total impossibility of the one, will save me the trouble of the other.
I rejoice that the President has expressed, in his late Message, a disposition to take into the protection of the Government the commerce of the United States, though little has yet been done, or attempted. This project of the gentleman from Pennsylvania I hope forms no part of the new system, and he would have acted wisely before he submitted it to have examined better its consequences, and to have looked for a moment at the present condition of our commerce. What is it? Plundered upon every coast and in every sea, your flag, instead of being a protection against insult, seems to have become an invitation to injury. The British, the French, and the Spaniards, in the ratio of their force, treat us with like indignities; this is the only point in which they can agree. The former have adopted, and openly avow a system of measures that, if not counteracted, must go to deprive us of the most important of our neutral rights; while the two latter are anxiously rivalling each other in the most lawless and piratical depredations upon our defenceless trade;even the commissioned vessels of our Government have not been suffered to pass the high seas without insult and violence. The British and the French, whenever it suits their views, blockade our very ports; the British take their position off New York, so as to be convenient to the courts of Halifax; and our friends, the French, to whom the gentleman from Pennsylvania has told us we should be so particularly civil, take occasionally into their holy keeping, the commerce of Charleston and New Orleans, so as to be at a convenient distance from the British. Our trade with St. Domingo, indeed, the French have not been able to stop, nor have even the British yet assumed to themselves this maritime right; but the gentleman from Pennsylvania, in his great good faith and abundant charity, will now anticipate their wishes, and do it for them. This, indeed, surpasses even Christian meekness; it is not only, when smitten upon one cheek, turning the other also, but chastening ourselves with more than monkish severity, in the most vulnerable part.
On motion, by one of the majority, to reconsider the fourth section which restricts the operation of the law to one year, it passed in the negative.
On motion, to agree to the final passage of the bill, it was determined in the affirmative—yeas 21, nays 8, as follows:
Yeas.—Messrs. Anderson, Baldwin, Bradley, Condit, Fenner, Gaillard, Gilman, Howland, Kitchel, Logan, Maclay, Mitchill, Moore, Smith of Maryland, Smith of New York, Smith of Ohio, Smith of Tennessee, Sumter, Turner, Worthington, and Wright.Nays.—Messrs. Adams, Bayard, Hillhouse, Pickering, Plumer, Stone, Tracy, and White.
Yeas.—Messrs. Anderson, Baldwin, Bradley, Condit, Fenner, Gaillard, Gilman, Howland, Kitchel, Logan, Maclay, Mitchill, Moore, Smith of Maryland, Smith of New York, Smith of Ohio, Smith of Tennessee, Sumter, Turner, Worthington, and Wright.
Nays.—Messrs. Adams, Bayard, Hillhouse, Pickering, Plumer, Stone, Tracy, and White.
So it wasResolved, That this bill pass, that it be engrossed, and that the title thereof be “An act to suspend the commercial intercourse between the United States and certain parts of the island of St. Domingo.”
The Senate resumed, as in Committee of the Whole, the amendment reported by the select committee to the bill to prevent the abuse of the privileges and immunities enjoyed by foreign Ministers within the United States.
Mr.Adams.—There are two points of view, Mr. President, in which it appears to me to be important that the provisions of this bill should be considered—the one as they relate to the laws of nations, and the other as they regard the Constitution of the United States. From both these sources have arisen inducements combining to produce conviction upon my mind of the propriety, and indeed the necessity of some measure similar in principle to that which I have had the honor to propose. I shall take the liberty to state them in their turns, endeavoring to keep them as distinct from each other as the great and obvious difference of their character requires, and that their combination on this occasion may appear in the striking light which may render it the most effectual.
By the laws of nations, a foreign Minister is entitled, not barely to the general security and protection which the laws of every civilized people extend to the subjects of other nations residing among them. He is indulged with many privileges of a high and uncommon nature—with many exemptions from the operation of the laws of the country where he resides, and among others, with a general exemption from the jurisdiction of the judicial courts, both civil and criminal. This immunity is, in respect to the criminal jurisdiction, without limitation; and an Ambassador, though guilty of the most aggravated crimes of which the heart of man can conceive or his hand commit, cannot be punished for them by the tribunals of the Sovereign with whom he resides. Should he conspire the destruction of the constitution or government of the State, no jury of his peers can there convict him of treason. Should he point the dagger of assassination to the heart of a citizen, he cannot be put to plead for the crime of murder. In these respects he is considered as the subject, not of the State to which he is sent, but of the State which sent him, and the only punishment which can be inflicted on his crimes is left to the justice of his master.
In a republican government, like that under which we have the happiness to live, this exemption is not enjoyed by any individual of the nation itself, however exalted in rank or station. It is our pride and glory, that all are equal in the eyes of the law; that, however adorned with dignity, or armed with power, no man owing allegiance to the majesty of the nation can screen himself from the vindictive arm of her justice; yet even the nations whose internal constitutions are founded upon this virtuous and honorable principle of equal and universal rights, have, like all the rest, submitted to this great and extraordinary exception. In order to account for so singular a deviation from principles in every other respect deemed of the highest moment and of the most universal application, we must inquire into the reasons which have induced all the nations of the civilized world to this broad departure from the fundamental maxims of their government.
The most eminent writers on the laws of nations have at different times assigned various reasons for this phenomenon in politics and morals. It has sometimes been said to rest uponfictionsof law. The reasoning has been thus: every Sovereign Prince is independent of all others, and as such cannot, even when personally within the territories of another, be amenable to his jurisdiction. An ambassador represents the person of his master, and therefore must enjoy the same immunities. But this reasoning cannot be satisfactory; for, in the first place, a foreign Minister does not necessarily represent the person of his master—he represents him only in his affairs; and besides representing him he has a personal existence of hisown, altogether distinct from his representative character, and for which, on the principles of common sense, he ought, like every other individual, to be responsible. At other times, another fiction of law has been alleged, in this manner; the foreign Minister is not the subject of the State to which he is sent, but of his own Sovereign: he is therefore to be considered as still residing within the territories of his master, and not in those of the Prince to whom he is accredited. But this fiction, like the other, forgets the personal existence of the Minister. It is dangerous, at all times, to derive important practical consequences from fictions of law, in direct opposition to the fact. If the principle of personal representation, or that ofexterritorialityannexed to the character of a foreign Minister be admitted at all, it can in sound argument apply only to his official conduct—to his acts in the capacity of a Minister, and not to his private and individual affairs. The Minister can represent the person of the Prince, no otherwise than as any agent or factor represents the person of his principal; and it would be an ill compliment to a Sovereign Prince to consider him as personally represented by his Minister in the commission of an atrocious crime. Another objection against this wide-encroaching inference from the doctrine of personal representation, is, that it is suitable only to Monarchies. The Minister of a King may be feigned to represent in all respects the person of his master, but what person can be represented by the Ambassador of a Republic? If I am answered, themoral personof the nation, then I reply,thatcan be represented by no individual, being itself a fiction in law, incapable of committing any act, and having no corporeal existence susceptible of representation. I have said thus much on this subject, because I have heard in conversation these legal fictions alleged against the adoption of the bill on your table, and because they may perhaps be urged against it here.
But it is neither in the fiction ofexterritoriality, nor in that of personal representation, that we are to seek for the substantial reason upon which the customary law of nations has founded the extraordinary privileges of ambassadors; it is in the nature of their office, of their duties, and of their situation.
By their office, they are intended to be the mediators of peace, of commerce, and of friendship, between nations; by their duties they are bound to maintain with firmness, though in the spirit of conciliation, the rights, the honor, and the interests of their nation, even in the midst of those who have opposing interests, who assert conflicting rights, and who are guided by an equal and adverse sense of honor; by their situation they would, without some extraordinary provision in their favor, be at the mercy of the very Prince against whom they are thus to maintain the rights, the honor, and the interest of their own. As the ministers of peace and friendship, their functions are not only of the highest and most beneficial utility, but of indispensable necessity to all nations having any mutual intercourse with each other. They are the only instruments by which the miseries of war can be averted when it approaches, or terminated when it exists. It is by their agency that the prejudices of contending nations are to be dissipated—that the violent and destructive passions of nations are to be appeased—that men, as far as their nature will admit, are to be converted from butchers of their kind, into a band of friends and brothers. It is this consideration, sir, which, by the common consent of mankind, has surrounded with sanctity the official character of Ambassadors; it is this which has enlarged their independency to such an immeasurable extent; it is this which has loosed them from all the customary ties which bind together the social compact of common rights and common obligations.
But immunities of a nature so extraordinary cannot, from the nature of mankind, be frequently conferred, without becoming liable to frequent abuse. Ambassadors are still beings subject to the passions, the vices, and infirmities of man. However exempted from the danger of punishment, they are not exempt from the commission of crimes. Besides their participation in the imperfections of humanity, they have temptations and opportunities peculiar to themselves, to transgressions of a very dangerous description, and a very aggravated character. While the functions of their office place in their hands the management of those great controversies, upon which whole nations are wont to stake their existence; while their situations afford them the means, and stimulate them to the employment of the base but powerful weapons of faction, of corruption, and of treachery, their very privileges and immunities concur in assailing their integrity by the promise of security, even in case of defeat—of impunity, even after detection.
The experience of all ages and of every nation has therefore pointed to the necessity of erecting some barrier against the abuse of those immunities and privileges, with which foreign Ministers have at all times and every where been indulged. In some aggravated instances the rulers of the State where the crime was committed have boldly broken down the wall of privilege under which the guilty stranger would fain have sheltered himself, and in defiance of the laws of nations have delivered up the criminal to the tribunals of the country for trial, sentence, and execution; at other times the popular indignation, by a process still more irregular, has, without the forms of law, wreaked its vengeance upon the perpetrators of those crimes, which otherwise must have remained unwhipped of justice. Cases have sometimes occurred when the principles of self-preservation and defence have justified the injured Government, endangered in its vital parts, in arresting the person of such a Minister during the crisis of danger, and confining him under guard until he could with safety be removed. But the practicewhich the reason of the case and the usage of nations has prescribed and recognized, is, (according to the aggravation of the offence,) to order the criminal to depart from the territories whose laws he has violated, or to send him home, sometimes under custody, to his Sovereign; demanding of him that justice, reparation, and punishment, which the nature of the case requires, and which he alone is entitled to dispense. This power is admitted by the concurrent testimony of all the writers on the laws of nations, and has the sanction of practice equally universal. It results, indeed, as a consequence absolutely necessary from the independence of foreign Ministers on the judicial authority, and is perfectly reconcilable with it. As respects the offended nation, it is a measure of self-defence, justified by the acknowledged destitution of every other remedy. As respects the offending Minister, it is the only means of remitting him for trial and punishment to the tribunals whose jurisdiction he cannot recuse; and as respects his Sovereign, it preserves inviolate his rights, and at the same time manifests that confidence in his justice which civilized nations living in amity are bound to place in each other.
On these principles, thus equitable and moderate in themselves, and thus universally established, is founded every provision of the bill before you, so far as it implicates the law of nations. I have been fully aware that, although by the Constitution of the United States Congress are authorized to define and punish offences against the law of nations, yet this did not imply a power to innovate upon those laws. I could not be ignorant that the Legislature of one individual in the great community of nations has no right to prescribe rules of conduct which can be binding upon all; and therefore, in the provisions of this bill, it was my primary object not to deviate one step from the worn and beaten path—not to vary one jot or one tittle from the prescriptions of immemorial usage and unquestioned authority.
In consulting for this purpose the writers, characterized by one of our own statesmen in a pamphlet recently laid on our tables, as “the luminaries and oracles to whom the appeal is generally made by nations who prefer an appeal to law rather than to power,” I found that they distinguished the offences which may be committed by foreign Ministers into two kinds—the one against the municipal laws of the country where they reside, and the other against the Government or State to which they are accredited; and that they recommended a correspondent modification of the manner in which they are to be treated by the offended Sovereign. The first section of the bill therefore directs the mode of treatment towards foreign Ministers guilty of heinous offences against the municipal laws; for, as to those minor transgressions which are usually left unnoticed by other States, I have thought no provision necessary for them. The section points out the mode by which the insulted State or injured individual may apply to the Chief Magistrate of the Union for redress, and by what process the President may obtain reparation from the offender’s Sovereign, or, in case of refusal, dismiss the offender from the territories of the United States.
The second section provides for the case of offences against the Government of the nation. If the insult is direct upon the President of the United States himself, it authorizes him at once to discard the offender; if the injury be against the nation, by any conspiracy or other act of hostility, it offers the means of removing at once so dangerous a disturber of the public tranquillity. This also will be found exactly conformable to the directions inVattel.
The third section brings me to the consideration of the relation which the bill bears to the Constitution of the United States. It contains a regulation, the object of which is at once to prevent all misunderstanding by the offending Minister’s Sovereign of the grounds upon which he should be ordered to depart or sent home, and to mark by a strong line of discrimination the cases when a foreign Minister is dismissed for misconduct, from those when he is expelled on account of national differences. In this latter case, by the general understanding and usage of nations, an order to depart given to a foreign Minister is equivalent to a declaration of war. In the European Governments, where the power of declaring war and that of negotiating with foreign States are committed to the same hands, this nice discrimination of the specific reasons for which a Minister may be dismissed is far less important than with us. The power of declaring war is with us exclusively vested in Congress; and as the order to depart, when founded on national disputes, amounts to such a declaration, it appears to me, by fair inference, that for such cause the President of the United States cannot issue such an order without the express request or concurrence of Congress to that effect. It was from this view of the subject that, in the present bill, the power vested in the President to send home a culpable Minister is so precisely limited to the cases when the Minister shall have deserved that treatment by his personal misconduct. This distinction between the causes for which a foreign Minister may be sent home has been solemnly recognized in a remarkable manner by this Government in the treaty with Great Britain of the 19th November, 1794, in the twenty-sixth article.
Here, sir, the sending home a Minister for national causes is recognized to be the very test of a rupture, and exactly tantamount to a declaration of war. But the same act, done for the Minister’s personal misconduct, is acknowledged to be a right of both parties, which they agree to retain; and it is stipulated that it shall not in that case be deemed equivalent to a rupture. The expressions used imply that the parties did not consider themselves as introducingin this part of the article a new law, but as explaining the old. It is merely declaratory, “for greater certainty,” and the previous existence of the right is recognized by the stipulation that both parties shall retain it. This is one of the articles of the treaty which have expired; but as expressing the sense both of our own nation and of Great Britain upon the subject to which it relates, it is as effectual as it ever could be. Its provisions are still binding upon both parties as part of the law of nations, though they have ceased to be obligatory as positive stipulations.
It may now perhaps be expected, sir, that I should give some explanation of the more immediate circumstances in which the bill originated. And here I am sensible that I tread upon delicate ground. So highly honorable and respectable is the office of a foreign Minister, that to treat him with disrespect in common discourse, and still more in legislative deliberation, would be without excuse, were his own conduct altogether unexceptionable. Should the occasion ever happen that a foreign Minister by his own violation of all the common decencies of social intercourse towards the Government to which he was accredited, should forfeit every right to personal respect or esteem, still I hope, sir, I should not forget the consideration due to the credentials of his Sovereign; still I should think myself bound to observe all that moderation of expression which can be consistent with the sentiments of indignation involuntarily excited in my breast by an insult upon the Government of my country.
Within a few days after the Message of the President at the commencement of the present session of Congress was made public, the Spanish Minister[30]addressed to the Secretary of State a letter couched in terms which it cannot be necessary for me to particularize, and containing, not only strictures of the most extraordinary nature upon all the parts of that Message respecting Spain, but complaints no less extraordinary at what it did not contain. Consider this procedure in its real light, sir, and what is it? A foreign Minister takes to task the President of the United States for the manner in which he has executed one of the most important functions enjoined upon him by the constitution. He not only charges him with misrepresentation in what he did say, but he presumes to dictate to him what he should have said. I forbear all comment upon this conduct as it relates to the present Chief Magistrate. I ask you, sir, and I entreat every member of this Senate to ask himself, What is its tendency as it relates to our country? The Constitution of the United States makes it one of the President’s most solemn duties to communicate to Congress correct information relating to the state of our public affairs. In every possible case of disputes and controversies of right between the United States and any foreign nation, the Minister of that nation must have an interest—and the strongest interest, to give a gloss and coloring to the objects in litigation—opposite to the interest of our country. If, whenever the President of the United States, upon the high and solemn responsibility which weighs upon every act of his official duty, gives to Congress that account of our foreign relations which is necessary to enable them to adapt their measures to the circumstances for the general welfare of the Union, a foreign Minister, under color of his official privileges, is to contradict every part of his statements, to impeach the correctness of his facts, and to chide him even for his omissions, to what an abyss of abasement is the Chief Magistrate of this Union to be degraded! The freedom which a Spanish Minister, unreproved, can take to-day, a French Minister would claim as a right to-morrow, and a British Minister would exercise without ceremony the next day. A diplomatic censorship would be established over the Supreme Executive of this nation, and the President would not dare to exhibit to Congress the statement of our national concerns, without previously submitting his Message for approbation to a Cabinet Counsel of foreign Ministers. Under the British Constitution, the speeches of the Sovereign to his Parliament are all settled in his Privy Council, and the Royal lips are understood to give utterance only to the words of the Minister. The reason of this is, that by the forms of their constitution the Sovereign himself is above all responsibility, and the Minister is the person accountable to the nation for the substance of the discourse delivered by his master. In their practice, therefore, the speech is made by him on whom the responsibility rests. But if this new assumption of the Spanish Minister is submitted to, our practice will be an improvement on the British theory of a singular cast indeed; for, while the responsibility will rest upon the President who delivers the Message, its contents will be dictated by persons not only loosed from all responsibility to our country, but bound in allegiance, in zeal, in duty, to the very Princes with whom we have to contend. The same control which by this measure is attempted to be usurped over the acts of the President, will at the next step, and by an easy transition, be extended to the Legislature; and, instead of parcelling out the Message among several committees for their consideration, we shall have to appoint committees upon every part of the Message relating to any foreign Power to wait upon the Minister of that Power, and inquire what it is the pleasure of his master that we should do.
That such is the inevitable tendency and the real intention of the proceeding will appear, not only from a due consideration of the act itself, but from a proper estimate of its avowed motive, and from the subsequent conduct of the same Minister. He addressed this letter to the Secretary of State, not for the purpose of asking any explanation—not for the purpose of givingany satisfaction—not for any of the usual and proper purposes of a diplomatic communication—but (as he himself declares) for our Government to publish, with a view to counteract the statements of the President’s Message. It was a challenge to the President to enter the lists of a pamphleteering war against him, for the instruction of the American people and the amusement of foreign Courts; and having failed in this laudable project, he addresses, after the expiration of forty days, a circular letter to the other foreign Ministers residing in the United States, with copies of his letter to the Secretary of State, as if these foreign Ministers were the regular umpires between him and our Government. Not content however with this appeal, he authorizes them to give copies of his letters to ensure that publication with which our Government had not gratified him, and calls at once upon the American people, and upon the European Courts, to decide between the President and him. Here, too, sir, I beg gentlemen to abstract the particular instance from the general principle of this transaction. The same act which under one set of circumstances can only excite contempt, under another becomes formidable in the extreme. Of the newspaper appeal to the people I say nothing. The people of this country are not so dull of understanding or so depraved in vice as to credit the assertions of a foreigner, bound by no tie of duty to them—the creature and agent of their adversary—in contradiction to those of their own officer, answerable to them for his every word, and stationed at the post of their highest confidence. But the circular to the other foreign Ministers is a species of appeal hitherto unprecedented in the United States. And what is its object? The information of their Courts; that the Governments of France and Great Britain may learn from him the justice and generosity of his master.
It is probable that both those nations—the ally and the enemy of Spain—have much better materials for estimating the justice and generosity of His Catholic Majesty; but what have they to do in the case? By an anonymous newspaper publication, the idiom of which discovers its origin, a precedent is alleged in justification of this extraordinary step, and the reciprocal communication of diplomatic memorials concerning the affair of Holland in the years 1786 and 1787, between the Ministers of Great Britain, France, and Prussia, at the Hague, is gravely adduced as warranting this innovation of the Spanish Minister here. The very reference to that time, place, and occasion, would of itself be a sufficient indication of the intent at this time. In the years 1786 and 1787, the three Powers I have just mentioned undertook, between them, not only to interfere in the internal government of Holland, but to regulate and control it according to a plan upon which they were endeavoring to agree. Their Ministers, therefore, very naturally communicated to each other the memorials which they presented to the Dutch Government. And what was the result? Two of those three Powers fixed between themselves the doom of Holland—raised a tyrannical faction upon the ruins of that country’s freedom, and marched the Duke of Brunswick, at the head of thirty thousand men, into Amsterdam, to convince the Hollanders of the King of Prussia’sjusticeandgenerosity.
This, sir, is the precedent called to our recollection for the purpose of reconciling us to the humiliation of our condition. We are patiently to behold a Spanish Minister insulting the President of the United States—dictating to himhisconstruction of our constitution—calling upon other foreign Ministers to countenance his presumption—and intrenching himself behind the example of another nation, once made the victim of a like usurpation! The resemblance is but too strong, and will, I hope, not be forgotten by us. If the constitutional powers of a Dutch Stadtholder were prescribed and moulded according to the pleasure and by the interference of foreign Powers, (as undoubtedly they were,) let us remember the fact with a determination never to be so controlled ourselves. It is held up to us as an example: let us take it as warning.
The subsequent proceedings of the Spanish Minister have been all in the same spirit with that under which he presumed to call upon the President to enter the lists of altercation with him before the people of this country. They manifest pretensions to which we ought not to submit—which we ought vigorously to resist. In his last letter to the Secretary of State, he tells him that he will receive no orders but from his own master. Now, if this has any meaning, it must be to deny the United States the right of ordering him away: that is one of the most indisputable rights of every Sovereign Power. When pretensions so destitute of all foundation are advanced, it becomes us immediately to show our sense of them: not to resist them might be construed into acquiescence. It is a virtual dereliction of our rights not to defend them when they are assailed.
I am indeed fully sensible that the operation of the bill I have proposed, should it meet the sanction of Congress, will not be retrospective—that to what has passed no remedy which can now be provided will apply—but we may prevent in future occurrences of a like character, and much more dangerous consequence. We may prevent the spreading of an evil which threatens the dearest interests of the nation; we may prevent even the repetition of insults and injuries, which, but for the want of the regulations now proposed, in all probability never would have been offered. In my own opinion, the necessity for some legislative provision upon this subject will force itself upon this Government with additional pressure, from year to year, until it can no longer be resisted. If foreign Ministers are to possess in the United States an unbounded independence of all the tribunals of justice, while the United States on their part are to be deprived of the ordinarymeans of self-defence, enjoyed and exercised by all other Sovereigns, to check the abuse of those formidable privileges, the course of events will, in my belief, at no very distant day, bring us into that unhappy dilemma which will leave no other alternative than to infringe the laws of nations or to sacrifice our constitution—to commit violent outrage upon the rights of others, or to make a dastardly surrender of our own.
The amendment was adopted, and the bill ordered to a third reading.
The Senate resumed the third reading of the bill to prevent the abuse of the privileges and immunities enjoyed by foreign Ministers within the United States.
A motion was made to strike out the first, second, and third sections of the bill. Whereupon, a division of the question was called for; and on the question to strike out the first section, it was determined in the affirmative—yeas 23, nays 7, as follows: