first moments of the war, before the government could have time to
take precautions against them, and its immediate disapprobation of
those equipments, must rescue it from every imputation of being
accessory to them, and had placed it with the offended, not the
offending party.

Those gentlemen were therefore of opinion, that the vessels which had
been captured on the high seas, and brought into the United States, by
privateers fitted out and commissioned in their ports, ought not to be
restored.

The secretaries of the treasury, and of war, were of different
opinion. They urged that a neutral, permitting itself to be made an
instrument of hostility by one belligerent against another, became
thereby an associate in the war. If land or naval armaments might be
formed by France within the United States, for the purpose of carrying
on expeditions against her enemy, and might return with the spoils
they had taken, and prepare new enterprises, it was apparent that a
state of war would exist between America and those enemies, of the
worst kind for them: since, while the resources of the country were
employed in annoying them, the instruments of this annoyance would be
occasionally protected from pursuit, by the privileges of an
ostensible neutrality. It was easy to see that such a state of things
could not be tolerated longer than until it should be perceived.

It being confessedly contrary to the duty of the United States, as a
neutral nation, to suffer privateers to be fitted in their ports to
annoy the British trade, it seemed to follow that it would comport
with their duty, to remedy the injury which may have been sustained,
when it is in their power so to do.

That the fact had been committed before the government could provide
against it might be an excuse, but not a justification. Every
government is responsible for the conduct of all parts of the
community over which it presides, and is supposed to possess, at all
times, the means of preventing infractions of its duty to foreign
nations. In the present instance, the magistracy of the place ought to
have prevented them. However valid this excuse might have been, had
the privateers expedited from Charleston been sent to the French
dominions, there to operate out of the reach of the United States, it
could be of no avail when their prizes were brought into the American
ports, and the government, thereby, completely enabled to administer a
specific remedy for the i