conciled with the claim
of Great Britain. When every one whose native tongue was English was
also by birth the subject of Great Britain, the visitation of a
foreign neutral, in order to take from her any British seamen,
involved no great difficulty of discrimination, nor--granting the
theory of inalienable allegiance--any injustice to the person taken.
It was quite different when a large maritime English-speaking
population, quite comparable in numbers to that remaining British, had
become independent. The exercise of the British right, if right it
was, became liable to grievous wrong, not only to the individuals
affected, but to the nation responsible for their protection; and the
injury was greater, both in procedure and result, because the
officials intrusted with the enforcement of the British claim were
personally interested in the decisions they rendered. No one who
understands the affection of a naval officer for an able seaman,
especially if his ship be short-handed, will need to have explained
how difficult it became for him to distinguish between an Englishman
and an American, when much wanted. In short, there was on each side a
practical grievance; but the character of the remedy to be applied
involved a question of principle, the effect of which would be unequal
between the disputants, increasing the burden of the one while it
diminished that of the other, according as the one or the other
solution was adopted.

Except for the fact that the British Government had at its disposal
overwhelming physical force, its case would have shared that of all
other prescriptive rights when they come into collision with present
actualities, demanding their modification. It might be never so true
that long-standing precedent made legal the impressment of British
seamen from neutral vessels on the open sea; but it remained that in
practice many American seamen were seized, and forced into involuntary
servitude, the duration of which, under the customs of the British
Navy, was terminable certainly only by desertion or death. The very
difficulty of distinguishing between the natives of the two countries,
"owing to similarity of language, habits, and manners,"[136] alleged
in 1797 by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville, to Rufus
King, the American Minister, did but emphasize the incompatibility of
the British claim with the security of the American citizen. The
Consul-General of Great Britain at New York during most