nd, as in this instance, by
a foreign government, that its treaties with other nations cannot
be executed without the establishment and enforcement of new
principles of maritime police, to be applied without our consent,
we must employ a language neither of equivocal import nor
susceptible of misconstruction. American citizens prosecuting a
lawful commerce in the African seas, under the flag of their
country, are not responsible for the abuse or unlawful use of that
flag by others; nor can they rightfully, on account of any such
alleged abuses, be interrupted, molested, or detained while on the
ocean; and if thus molested and detained while pursuing honest
voyages in the usual way, and violating no law themselves, they are
unquestionably entitled to indemnity."

This declaration of the President stands: not a syllable of it has been,
or will be, retracted. The principles which it announces rest on their
inherent justice and propriety, on their conformity to public law, and,
so far as we are concerned, on the determination and ability of the
country to maintain them. To these principles the government is pledged,
and that pledge it will be at all times ready to redeem.

But what is your own language on this point? You say, "This claim (the
British claim), thus asserted and supported, was promptly met and firmly
repelled by the President in his message at the commencement of the last
session of Congress; and in your letter to me approving the course I had
adopted in relation to the question of the ratification by France of the
quintuple treaty, you consider the principles of that message as the
established policy of the government." And you add, "So far, our
national dignity was uncompromitted." If this be so, what is there which
has since occurred to compromit this dignity? You shall yourself be
judge of this; because you say, in a subsequent part of your letter,
that "the mutual rights of the parties are in this respect wholly
untouched." If, then, the British pretension had been promptly met and
firmly repelled by the President's message; if, so far, our national
dignity had not been compromitted; and if, as you further say, our
rights remain wholly untouched by any subsequent act or proceeding, what
ground is there on which to found complaint against the treaty?

But your sentiments on this point do not concur with the opinions of
your government. That gove