ssels liable to be seized and condemned in
British prize courts whenever it was clear that their cargoes were not
American produce, but were actually purchased at the port of an enemy.
Even provisions purchased from an enemy or its colonies were considered
"contraband of war" on the ground that they afforded actual aid and
encouragement to an enemy. The United States urged at first that only
military stores could fall under this category, and eventually went so
far as to assert the principle that under all circumstances "free ships
make free goods," and that neutral ships had a right to carry any
property, even that of a nation at war with another power, and to trade
when and where they liked without fear of capture. England, however,
would not admit in those days of trial principles which would
practically make a neutral nation an ally of her foe. She persisted in
restricting the commerce of the United States by all the force she had
upon the sea.

This restrictive policy, which touched the American pocket and
consequently the American heart so deeply, was complicated by another
question of equal, if not greater, import. The forcible impressment of
men to man the British fleet had been for many years a necessary evil in
view of the national emergency, and of the increase in the mercantile
marine which attracted large numbers to its service. Great abuses were
perpetrated in the operation of this harsh method of maintaining an
efficient naval force, and there was no part of the British Isles where
the presence of a press gang did not bring dismay into many a home.
Great Britain, then and for many years later, upheld to an extreme
degree the doctrine of perpetual allegiance; she refused to recognise
the right of any of her citizens to divest themselves of their national
fealty and become by naturalisation the subject of a foreign power or a
citizen of the United States Such a doctrine was necessarily most
obnoxious to the government and people of a new republic like the United
States, whose future development rested on the basis of a steady and
large immigration, which lost much of its strength and usefulness as
long as the men who came into the country were not recognised as
American citizens at home and abroad. Great Britain claimed the right,
as a corollary of this doctrine of indefeasible allegiance, to search
the neutral ships of the United States during the war with France, to
enquire into the nationality of the sea