792-93, when war broke out between France and Great Britain, the
former claimed privileges in American ports which our Government did
not admit as deducible from the treaties of 1778, and which it was held
were in conflict with obligations to the other belligerent powers. The
liberal principle of one of the treaties referred to--that free ships
make free goods, and that subsistence and supplies were not contraband
of war unless destined to a blockaded port--was found, in a commercial
view, to operate disadvantageously to France as compared with her enemy,
Great Britain, the latter asserting, under the law of nations, the right
to capture as contraband supplies when bound for an enemy's port.

Induced mainly, it is believed, by these considerations, the Government
of France decreed on the 9th of May, 1793, the first year of the war,
that "the French people are no longer permitted to fulfill toward the
neutral powers in general the vows they have so often manifested, and
which they constantly make for the full and entire liberty of commerce
and navigation," and, as a counter measure to the course of Great
Britain, authorized the seizure of neutral vessels bound to an enemy's
port in like manner as that was done by her great maritime rival.
This decree was made to act retrospectively, and to continue until the
enemies of France should desist from depredations on the neutral vessels
bound to the ports of France. Then followed the embargo, by which our
vessels were detained in Bordeaux; the seizure of British goods on
board of our ships, and of the property of American citizens under the
pretense that it belonged to English subjects, and the imprisonment of
American citizens captured on the high seas.

Against these infractions of existing treaties and violations of our
rights as a neutral power we complained and remonstrated. For the
property of our injured citizens we demanded that due compensation
should be made, and from 1793 to 1797 used every means, ordinary and
extraordinary, to obtain redress by negotiation. In the last-mentioned
year these efforts were met by a refusal to receive a minister sent
by our Government with special instructions to represent the amicable
disposition of the Government and people of the United States and their
desire to remove jealousies and to restore confidence by showing that
the complaints against them were groundless. Failing in this, another
attempt to adjust all differences between th