ur enemy to inflict injury upon our
commerce would be tenfold greater than ours to retaliate. We could not
extricate our country from this unequal condition, with such an enemy,
unless we at once departed from our present peaceful policy and became a
great naval power. Nor would this country be better situated in war with
one of the secondary naval powers. Though the naval disparity would be
less, the greater extent and more exposed condition of our widespread
commerce would give any of them a like advantage over us.

The proposition to enter into engagements to forego a resort to
privateers in case this country should be forced into war with a great
naval power is not entitled to more favorable consideration than would
be a proposition to agree not to accept the services of volunteers for
operations on land. When the honor or the rights of our country require
it to assume a hostile attitude, it confidently relies upon the
patriotism of its citizens, not ordinarily devoted to the military
profession, to augment the Army and the Navy so as to make them fully
adequate to the emergency which calls them into action. The proposal to
surrender the right to employ privateers is professedly founded upon the
principle that private property of unoffending noncombatants, though
enemies, should be exempt from the ravages of war; but the proposed
surrender goes but little way in carrying out that principle, which
equally requires that such private property should not be seized or
molested by national ships of war. Should the leading powers of Europe
concur in proposing as a rule of international law to exempt private
property upon the ocean from seizure by public armed cruisers as well
as by privateers, the United States will readily meet them upon that
broad ground.

Since the adjournment of Congress the ratifications of the treaty
between the United States and Great Britain relative to coast fisheries
and to reciprocal trade with the British North American Provinces have
been exchanged, and some of its anticipated advantages are already
enjoyed by us, although its full execution was to abide certain acts of
legislation not yet fully performed. So soon as it was ratified Great
Britain opened to our commerce the free navigation of the river St.
Lawrence and to our fishermen unmolested access to the shores and bays,
from which they had been previously excluded, on the coasts of her North
American Provinces; in return for which she a