imes, the effectual
abolition of the practice has been requested and treated of; at other
times, its temporary suspension; and at other times, again, the
limitation of its exercise, and some security against its enormous
abuses.

A common destiny has attended these efforts; they have all failed. The
question stands at this moment where it stood fifty years ago. The
nearest approach to a settlement was a convention proposed in 1803, and
which had come to the point of signature, when it was broken off in
consequence of the British government insisting that the _narrow seas_
should be expressly excepted out of the sphere over which the
contemplated stipulation against impressment should extend. The American
Minister, Mr. King, regarded this exception as quite inadmissible, and
chose rather to abandon the negotiation than to acquiesce in the
doctrine which it proposed to establish.

England asserts the right of impressing British subjects, in time of
war, out of neutral merchant-vessels, and of deciding by her visiting
officers who, among the crews of such merchant-vessels, are British
subjects. She asserts this as a legal exercise of the prerogative of the
crown; which prerogative is alleged to be founded on the English law of
the perpetual and indissoluble allegiance of the subject, and his
obligation under all circumstances, and for his whole life, to render
military service to the crown whenever required.

This statement, made in the words of eminent British jurists, shows at
once that the English claim is far broader than the basis or platform on
which it is raised. The law relied on is English law; the obligations
insisted on are obligations existing between the crown of England and
its subjects. This law and these obligations, it is admitted, may be
such as England may choose they shall be. But then they must be confined
to the parties. Impressment of seamen out of and beyond English
territory, and from on board the ships of other nations, is an
interference with the rights of other nations; is further, therefore,
than English prerogative can legally extend; and is nothing but an
attempt to enforce the peculiar law of England beyond the dominions and
jurisdiction of the crown. The claim asserts an extra-territorial
authority for the law of British prerogative, and assumes to exercise
this extra-territorial authority, to the manifest injury and annoyance
of the citizens and subjects of other states, on board their