tain. The British cabinet also must be sensible that, with respect to
the important question of impressment, on which the war so essentially
turns, a search for or seizure of British persons or property on board
neutral vessels on the high seas is not a belligerent right derived from
the law of nations, and it is obvious that no visit or search or use of
force for any purpose on board the vessels of one independent power on
the high seas can in war or peace be sanctioned by the laws or authority
of another power. It is equally obvious that, for the purpose of
preserving to each State its seafaring members, by excluding them from
the vessels of the other, the mode heretofore proposed by the United
States and now enacted by them as an article of municipal policy, can
not for a moment be compared with the mode practiced by Great Britain
without a conviction of its title to preference, inasmuch as the latter
leaves the discrimination between the mariners of the two nations to
officers exposed by unavoidable bias as well as by a defect of evidence
to a wrong decision, under circumstances precluding for the most part
the enforcement of controlling penalties, and where a wrong decision,
besides the irreparable violation of the sacred rights of persons, might
frustrate the plans and profits of entire voyages; whereas the mode
assumed by the United States guards with studied fairness and efficacy
against errors in such cases and avoids the effect of casual errors on
the safety of navigation and the success of mercantile expeditions.

If the reasonableness of expectations drawn from these considerations
could guarantee their fulfillment a just peace would not be distant. But
it becomes the wisdom of the National Legislature to keep in mind the
true policy, or rather the indispensable obligation, of adapting its
measures to the supposition that the only course to that happy event is
in the vigorous employment of the resources of war. And painful as the
reflection is, this duty is particularly enforced by the spirit and
manner in which the war continues to be waged by the enemy, who,
uninfluenced by the unvaried examples of humanity set them, are adding
to the savage fury of it on one frontier a system of plunder and
conflagration on the other, equally forbidden by respect for national
character and by the established rules of civilized warfare.

As an encouragement to persevering and invigorated exertions to bring
the contest to a