l
pursued, and from the growing impatience of this country under
it."[134] When Pinkney arrived, the matter of the colonial trade had
already been settled indirectly by the Order of May 16, and it was
soon to disappear from prominence, merged in the extreme measures of
which that blockade was the precursor; but impressment remained an
unhealed sore to the end.

To understand the real gravity of this dispute, it is essential to
consider candidly the situation of both parties, and also the
influence exerted upon either by long-standing tradition. The British
Government did not advance a crude claim to impress American seamen.
What it did assert, and was enforcing, was a right to exercise over
individuals on board foreign merchantmen, upon the high seas, the
authority which it possessed on board British ships there, and over
all ships in British ports. The United States took the ground that no
such jurisdiction existed, unless over persons engaged in the military
service of an enemy; and that only when a vessel entered the ports or
territorial waters of Great Britain were those on board subject to
arrest by her officers. There, as in every state, they came under the
law of the land.

The British argument in favor of this alleged right may be stated in
the words of Canning, who became Foreign Secretary a year later.
Writing to Monroe, September 23, 1807, he starts from the premise,
then regarded by many even in America as sound, that allegiance by
birth is inalienable,--not to be renounced at the will of the
individual; consequently, "when mariners, subjects of his Majesty, are
employed in the private service of foreigners, they enter into
engagements inconsistent with the duty of subjects. In such cases, the
species of redress which the practice of all times has admitted and
sanctioned is that of taking those subjects at sea out of the service
of such foreign individuals, and recalling them to the discharge of
that paramount duty, which they owe to their sovereign and to their
country. That the exercise of this right involves some of the dearest
interests of Great Britain, your Government is ready to
acknowledge.... It is needless to repeat that these rights existed in
their fullest force for ages previous to the establishment of the
United States of America as an independent government; and it would be
difficult to contend that the recognition of that independence can
have operated any change in this respect."[135]