urishing state which secures its liberty, and renders it
respectable throughout Europe_.'

"But it may be said, a nation ought not to permit others to
decide on her rights and claims. Why not? Will the decision be
less consistent with justice, from being impartial and
disinterested? It is a maxim confirmed by universal experience,
that no man should be judge in his own cause; and are nations
less under the influence of interest and of passion than
individuals? Are they not, in fact, still less under the control
of moral obligation? Treaties have often been violated by
statesmen and senators, who would have shrunk from being equally
faithless in their private contracts. Is it to be supposed that
the government of a friendly power, in a controversy between us
and France, in which it had no interest, and with the
observation of the civilized world directed to its decision,
would be less likely to pronounce a fair and impartial judgment
than either France or ourselves?

"But we can decide our own controversies for ourselves, it is
said; that is, we can go to war and take our chance for the
result. Alas, 'it is an error,' says Vattel, 'no less absurd
than pernicious, to say that war is to _decide_ controversies
between those who, as in the case of nations, acknowledge no
judge. It is _power_ or _prudence_ rather than right that
victory usually declares for.'--Book III. Chap. 3.

"The United States chose to decide for themselves the
controversy about impressment, by appealing to the sword. In
this appeal they of course placed no reliance on the propriety
and justice of their claims, since such considerations could
have no influence on the fate of battle; but they depended
solely on their capacity to inflict more injury than they would
receive themselves, and this difference in the amount of injury
was to turn the scale in our favor. Our expectations, however,
were disappointed. Our commerce was annihilated, our frontier
towns were laid in ashes, our capital taken, our attempts upon
Canada were repulsed, with loss and disgrace; our people became
burthened with taxes, and we were at last glad to accept a
treaty of peace which, instead of containing, as we had fondly
hoped, a formal surrender on the part of Great Britain of the
right of impressment, made not the slightest all