beleaguers the port of its enemy, no other
has a right to enter their line, any more than their line of battle in
the open sea, or their lines of circumvallation, or of encampment, or
of battle-array on land. The space included within their lines in any
of those cases, is either the property of their enemy, or it is common
property assumed and possessed for the moment, which cannot be intruded
on, even by a neutral, without committing the very trespass we are now
considering, that of intruding into the lawful possession of a friend.

Although I consider the observance of these principles as of great
importance to the interests of peaceable nations, among whom I hope the
United States will ever place themselves, yet in the present state of
things they are not worth a war. Nor do I believe war the most certain
means of enforcing them. Those peaceable coercions which are in the
power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace,
are more likely to produce the desired effect.

The opinions I have here given, are those which have generally been
sanctioned by our government. In our treaties with France, the United
Netherlands, Sweden, and Prussia, the principle of free bottom, free
goods, was uniformly maintained. In the instructions of 1784, given
by Congress to their Ministers appointed to treat with the nations of
Europe generally, the same principle, and the doing away contraband
of war, were enjoined, and were acceded to in the treaty signed
with Portugal. In the late treaty with England, indeed, that power
perseveringly refused the principle of free bottoms, free goods; and it
was avoided in the late treaty with Prussia, at the instance of our
then administration, lest it should seem to take side in a question
then threatening decision by the sword. At the commencement of the war
between France and England, the representative of the French republic
then residing in the United States, complaining that the British armed
ships captured French property in American bottoms, insisted that the
principle of 'free bottoms, free goods,' was of the acknowledged law of
nations; that the violation of that principle by the British was a wrong
committed on us, and such an one as we ought to repel by joining in the
war against that country. We denied his position, and appealed to the
universal practice of Europe, in proof that the principle of 'free
bottoms, free goods,' was not acknowledged as of the natural law of