ress its opinion, could
not fail to have removed it.

By the tenth article of the treaty of peace between the United States
and Great Britain, concluded at Ghent, it was stipulated that both
parties should use their best endeavors to accomplish the abolition
of the African slave trade. This object has been accordingly pursued
by both Governments with great earnestness, by separate acts of
legislation, and by negotiation almost uninterrupted, with the purpose
of establishing a conceit between them in some measure which might
secure its accomplishment.

Great Britain in her negotiations with other powers had concluded
treaties with Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, in which, without
constituting the crime as piracy or classing it with crimes of that
denomination, the parties had conceded to the naval officers of each
other the right of search and capture of the vessels of either that
might be engaged in the slave trade, and had instituted courts
consisting of judges, subjects of both parties, for the trial of the
vessels so captured.

In the negotiations with the United States Great Britain had earnestly
and repeatedly pressed on them the adoption of similar provisions.
They had been resisted by the Executive on two grounds: One, that
the constitution of mixed tribunals was incompatible with their
Constitution; and the other, that the concession of the right of search
in time of peace for an offense not piratical would be repugnant to the
feelings of the nation and of dangerous tendency. The right of search is
the right of war of the belligerent toward the neutral. To extend it in
time of peace to any object whatever might establish a precedent which
might lead to others with some powers, and which, even if confined to
the instance specified, might be subject to great abuse.

Animated by an ardent desire to suppress this trade, the United States
took stronger ground by making it, by the act above referred to,
piratical, a measure more adequate to the end and free from many of
the objections applicable to the plan which had been proposed to them.
It is this alternative which the Executive, under the sanction and
injunctions above stated, offered to the British Government, and which
that Government has accepted. By making the crime piracy the right of
search attaches to the crime, and which when adopted by all nations will
be common to all; and that it will be so adopted may fairly be presumed
if steadily persevere