lities in full
course, it would have been unwise to discontinue them, until effectual
provision should be agreed to by England, for protecting our citizens on
the high seas from impressment by her naval commanders, through, error,
voluntary or involuntary; the fact being notorious, that these officers,
entering our ships at sea under pretext of searching for their seamen,
(which they have no right to do by the law or usage of nations, which
they neither do, nor ever did, as to any other nation but ours, and
which no nation ever before pretended to do in any case), entering
our ships, I say, under pretext of searching for and taking out their
seamen, they took ours, native as well as naturalized, knowing them to
be ours, merely because they wanted them; insomuch, that no American
could safely cross the ocean, or venture to pass by sea from one to
another of our own ports. It is not long since they impressed at sea two
nephews of General Washington, returning from Europe, and put them,
as common seamen, under the ordinary discipline of their ships of war.
There are certainly other wrongs to be settled between England and us;
but of a minor character, and such as a proper spirit of conciliation on
both sides would not permit to continue them at war. The sword, however,
can never again be sheathed, until the personal safety of an American
on the ocean, among the most important and most vital of the rights we
possess, is completely provided for.

As soon as we heard of her partial repeal of her orders of council, we
offered instantly to suspend hostilities by an armistice, if she would
suspend her impressments, and meet us in arrangements for securing our
citizens against them. She refused to do it, because impracticable by
any arrangement, as she pretends; but, in truth, because a body of sixty
to eighty thousand of the finest seamen in the world, which we possess,
is too great a resource for manning her exaggerated navy, to be
relinquished, as long as she can keep it open. Peace is in her hand,
whenever she will renounce the practice of aggression on the persons of
our citizens. If she thinks it worth eternal war, eternal war we
must have. She alleges that the sameness of language, of manners, of
appearance, renders it impossible to distinguish us from her subjects.
But because we speak English, and look like them, are we to be punished?
Are free and independent men to be submitted to their bondage?

England has misrepres