taking them under the pretext of their being British
subjects. There appears but one practicable rule, that the vessel
being American, shall be conclusive evidence that the hands are so to
a certain number, proportioned to her tonnage. Not more than one or two
officers should be permitted to visit a vessel. Mr. Albion Coxe has just
arrived.

I have the honor to be, with great and sincere esteem, Dear Sir, your
most obedient and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson,

LETTER CXLVII.--TO MR. HAMMOND, May 15, 1793

TO MR. HAMMOND.

Philadelphia, May 15, 1793.

Sir,

Your several memorials of the 8th instant have been laid before the
President, as had been that of the 2nd, as soon as received. They have
been considered with all the attention and the impartiality, which
a firm determination to do what is equal and right between all the
belligerent powers could inspire.

In one of these, you communicate, on the information of the British
Consul at Charleston, that the Consul of France at the same place
had condemned, as legal prize, a British vessel, captured by a French
frigate, and you justly add, that this judicial act is not warranted
by the usage of nations, nor by the stipulations existing between the
United States and France. I observe further, that it is not warranted by
any law of the land. It is consequently a mere nullity; as such it can
be respected in no court, can make no part in the title to the vessel,
nor give to the purchaser any other security than what he would have
had without it. In short, it is so absolutely nothing, as to give no
foundation of just concern to any person interested in the fate of the
vessel; and in this point of view, Sir, I am in hopes you will see it.
The proceeding, indeed, if the British Consul has been rightly informed
(and we have no other information of it), has been an act of
disrespect towards the United States, to which its government cannot
be inattentive: a just sense of our own rights and duties, and the
obviousness of the principle, are a security that no inconveniences will
be permitted to arise from repetitions of it.

The purchase of arms and military accoutrements by an agent of the
French government, in this country, with an intent to expert them to
France, is the subject of another of the memorials. Of this fact we are
equally uninformed as of the former. Our citizens have been always
free to make, vend, and export arms. It is the constant occupatio