numerous British seamen
sought employment in American merchant ships, hoping there to find
refuge from the protracted confinement of a now dreary maritime war.
Resort to impressment was not merely the act of a high-handed
Government, but the demand of both parties in the state, coerced by
the sentiment of the people, whose will is ultimately irresistible. No
ministry could hope to retain power if it surrendered the claim to
take seamen found under a neutral flag. This fact was thoroughly
established in a long discussion with United States plenipotentiaries,
five years before the war broke out.

On the other hand, the United States maintained that on the sea common
the only jurisdiction over a ship was that of its own nation. She
could not admit that American vessels there should be searched, for
other purposes than those conceded to the belligerent by international
law; that is, in order to determine the nature of the voyage, to
ascertain whether, by destination, by cargo, or by persons carried,
the obligations of neutrality were being infringed. If there was
reasonable cause for suspicion, the vessel, by accepted law and
precedent, might be sent to a port of the belligerent, where the
question was adjudicated by legal process; but the actual captor could
not decide it on the spot. On the contrary, he was bound, to the
utmost possible, to preserve from molestation everything on board the
seized vessel; in order that, if cleared, the owner might undergo no
damage beyond the detention. So deliberate a course was not suited to
the summary methods of impressment, nor to the urgent needs of the
British Navy. The boarding officer, who had no authority to take away
a bale of goods, decided then and there whether a man was subject to
impressment, and carried him off at once, if he so willed.

It is to the credit of the American Government under Jefferson, that,
though weak in its methods of seeking redress, it went straight back
of the individual sufferer, and rested its case unswervingly on the
broad principle.[2] That impressment, thus practised, swept in
American seamen, was an incident only, although it grievously
aggravated the injury. Whatever the native allegiance of individuals
on board any vessel on the open ocean, their rights were not to be
regulated by the municipal law of the belligerent, but by that of the
nation to which the ship belonged, of whose territory she was
constructively a part, and whose flag therefo