r this, we think it
fairer to take the risk of it on the executive than to leave it on your
shoulders. You will, therefore, with all due economy, and on the
best vouchers the nature of the case will admit, meet those expenses,
transmitting an account of them to the Secretary of State, to be
communicated to the legislature. It will be expedient that you take
proper opportunities in the mean time, of conferring with the minister
on this subject, in order to form some arrangement for the protection of
our seamen on those occasions. We entirely reject the mode which was the
subject of a conversation between Mr. Morris and him, which was,
that our seamen should always carry about them certificates of their
citizenship. This is a condition never yet submitted to by any nation,
one with which seamen would never have the precaution to comply;
the casualties of their calling would expose them to the constant
destruction or loss of this paper evidence, and thus, the British
government would be armed with legal authority to impress the whole of
our seamen. The simplest rule will be, that the vessel being American,
shall be evidence that the seamen on board her are such. If they
apprehend that our vessels might thus become asylums for the fugitives
of their own nation from impress-gangs, the number of men to be
protected by a vessel may be limited by her tonnage, and one or two
officers only be permitted to enter the vessel in order to examine the
numbers on board; but no press-gang should be allowed ever to go on
board an American vessel, till after it shall be found that there are
more than their stipulated number on board, nor till after the master
shall have refused to deliver the supernumeraries (to be named by
himself) to the press-officer who has come on board for that purpose;
and, even then, the American Consul should be called in. In order to
urge a settlement of this point, before a new occasion may arise, it may
not be amiss to draw their attention to the peculiar irritation
excited on the last occasion, and the difficulty of avoiding our making
immediate reprisals on their seamen here. You will be so good as to
communicate to me what shall pass on this subject, and it may be made an
article of convention, to be entered into either there or here.

You will receive herewith a copy of the journals of the ancient
Congress, and of the laws, journals, and reports of the present. Those
for the future, with gazettes and other