rd to the slave trade. If before our
laws for its suppression the flag of every nation might traverse the
ocean unquestioned by our cruisers, this freedom was not, in our
opinion, in the least abridged by our municipal legislation.

Any other doctrine, it is plain, would subject to an arbitrary and
ever-varying system of maritime police, adopted at will by the great
naval power for the time being, the trade of the world in any places
or in any articles which such power might see fit to prohibit to its
own subjects or citizens. A principle of this kind could scarcely be
acknowledged without subjecting commerce to the risk of constant and
harassing vexations.

The attempt to justify such a pretension from the right to visit and
detain ships upon reasonable suspicion of piracy would deservedly be
exposed to universal condemnation, since it would be an attempt to
convert an established rule of maritime law, incorporated as a principle
into the international code by the consent of all nations, into a rule
and principle adopted by a single nation and enforced only by its
assumed authority. To seize and detain a ship upon suspicion of piracy,
with probable cause and in good faith, affords no just ground either for
complaint on the part of the nation whose flag she bears or claim of
indemnity on the part of the owner. The universal law sanctions and the
common good requires the existence of such a rule. The right under such
circumstances not only to visit and detain but to search a ship is a
perfect right and involves neither responsibility nor indemnity. But,
with this single exception, no nation has in time of peace any authority
to detain the ships of another upon the high seas on any pretext
whatever beyond the limits of her territorial jurisdiction. And such,
I am happy to find, is substantially the doctrine of Great Britain
herself in her most recent official declarations, and even in those now
communicated to the House. These declarations may well lead us to doubt
whether the apparent difference between the two Governments is not
rather one of definition than of principle. Not only is the right of
_search_, properly so called, disclaimed by Great Britain, but even that
of mere visit and inquiry is asserted with qualifications inconsistent
with the idea of a perfect right.

In the dispatch of Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Everett of the 20th of December,
1841, as also in that just received by the British minister in this
countr