man on board of those vessels, to
impress all those whom her officers had reason to consider British
subjects by birth, and to pay no respect to the fact that they may have
been naturalised in the country of their adoption. The assertion of the
right to search a neutral vessel and to impress seamen who were British
subjects has in these modern times been condemned as a breach of the
sound principle, that a right of search can only be properly exercised
in the case of a neutral's violation of his neutrality--that is to say,
the giving of aid to one of the parties to the war The forcible
abduction of a seaman under the circumstances stated was simply an
unwarrantable attempt to enforce municipal law on board a neutral
vessel, which was in effect foreign territory, to be regarded as sacred
and inviolate except in a case where it was brought under the operation
of a recognised doctrine of international law. Great Britain at that
critical period of her national existence would not look beyond the fact
that the acts of the United States as a neutral were most antagonistic
to the energetic efforts she was making to maintain her naval supremacy
during the European crisis created by Napoleon's ambitious designs.

The desertion of British seamen from British ships, for the purpose of
finding refuge in the United States and then taking service in American
vessels, caused great irritation in Great Britain and justified, in the
opinion of some statesmen and publicists who only regarded national
necessities, the harsh and arbitrary manner in which English officials
stopped and searched American shipping on the high seas, seized men whom
they claimed to be deserters, and impressed any whom they asserted to be
still British subjects. In 1807 the British frigate "Leopard," acting
directly under the orders of the admiral at Halifax, even ventured to
fire a broadside into the United States cruiser "Chesapeake" a few miles
from Chesapeake Bay, killed and wounded a number of her crew, and then
carried off several sailors who were said to be, and no doubt were,
deserters from the English service and who were the primary cause of the
detention of this American man-of-war. For this unjustifiable act
England subsequently made some reparation, but nevertheless it rankled
for years in the minds of the party hostile to Great Britain and helped
to swell the list of grievances which the American government in the
course of years accumulated against t