onstrated both by the faulty character of the method
and the outrageous injustice in results, let us not be blind to the
actuality of the loss Great Britain was undergoing, nor to her
estimate of the compensation offered for the relinquishment of the
practice. The New England States, which furnished a large proportion
of the maritime population, affirmed continually by their constituted
authorities that very few of their seamen were known to be impressed.
Governor Strong of Massachusetts, in a message to the Legislature,
said, "The number of our native seamen impressed by British ships has
been grossly exaggerated, and the number of British seamen employed by
us has at all times been far greater than those of all nations who
have been impressed from our vessels. If we are contending for the
support of a claim to exempt British seamen from their allegiance to
their own country, is it not time to inquire whether our claim is
just?"[147] It seems singular now that the fewness of the citizens
hopelessly consigned to indefinite involuntary servitude should have
materially affected opinion as to the degree of the outrage; but,
after making allowance for the spirit of faction then prevalent, it
can be readily understood that such conditions, being believed by the
British, must color their judgment as to the real extent of the
injustice by which they profited. At New York, in 1805, Consul-General
Barclay,[148] who had then been resident for six years, in replying to
a letter from the Mayor, said, "It is a fact, too notorious to have
escaped your knowledge, that many of his Majesty's subjects are
furnished with American protection, to which they have no title." This
being brought to Madison's attention produced a complaint to the
British Minister. In justifying his statements, Barclay wrote there
were "innumerable instances where British subjects within a month
after their arrival in these states obtain certificates of
citizenship." "The documents I have already furnished you prove the
indiscriminate use of those certificates."[149] Representative Gaston
of North Carolina, whose utterances on another aspect of the question
have been before quoted,[150] said in this relation, "In the battle, I
think of the President and the Little Belt, a neighbor of mine, now an
industrious farmer, noticed in the number of the slain one of his own
name. He exclaimed, 'There goes one of my protections.' On being asked
for an explanation, he remark