rmed vessels to engage in like service.

These acts, though short of a declaration of war, which would put ail
the citizens of each country in hostility with those of the other, were,
nevertheless, actual war, partial in its application, maritime in its
character, but which required the expenditure of much of our public
treasure and much of the blood of our patriotic citizens, who, in
vessels but little suited to the purposes of war, went forth to battle
on the high seas for the rights and security of their fellow-citizens
and to repel indignities offered to the national honor.

It is not, then, because of any failure to use all available means,
diplomatic and military, to obtain reparation that liability for private
claims can have been incurred by the United States, and if there is any
pretense for such liability it must flow from the action, not from the
neglect, of the United States. The first complaint on the part of France
was against the proclamation of President Washington of April 22, 1793.
At that early period in the war which involved Austria, Prussia,
Sardinia, the United Netherlands, and Great Britain on the one part and
France on the other, the great and wise man who was the Chief Executive,
as he was and had been the guardian of our then infant Republic,
proclaimed that "the duty and interest of the United States require that
they should with sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct
friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers." This attitude of
neutrality, it was pretended, was in disregard of the obligations of
alliance between the United States and France. And this, together with
the often-renewed complaint that the stipulations of the treaties of
1778 had not been observed and executed by the United States, formed the
pretext for the series of outrages upon our Government and its citizens
which finally drove us to seek redress and safety by an appeal to force.
The treaties of 1778, so long the subject of French complaints, are now
understood to be the foundation upon which are laid these claims of
indemnity from the United States for spoliations committed by the French
prior to 1800. The act of our Government which abrogated not only the
treaties of 1778, but also the subsequent consular convention of 1788,
has already been referred to, and it may be well here to inquire what
the course of France was in relation thereto. By the decrees of 9th of
May, 1793, 7th of July, 1796, and 2d