munitions of war to the
principal seat of military operations and in bringing home their sick
and wounded soldiers; but such use of our mercantile marine is not
interdicted either by the international or by our municipal law, and
therefore does not compromit our neutral relations with Russia.

But our municipal law, in accordance with the law of nations,
peremptorily forbids not only foreigners, but our own citizens, to fit
out within the United States a vessel to commit hostilities against any
state with which the United States are at peace, or to increase the
force of any foreign armed vessel intended for such hostilities against
a friendly state.

Whatever concern may have been felt by either of the belligerent powers
lest private armed cruisers or other vessels in the service of one might
be fitted out in the ports of this country to depredate on the property
of the other, all such fears have proved to be utterly groundless. Our
citizens have been withheld from any such act or purpose by good faith
and by respect for the law.

While the laws of the Union are thus peremptory in their prohibition of
the equipment or armament of belligerent cruisers in our ports, they
provide not less absolutely that no person shall, within the territory
or jurisdiction of the United States, enlist or enter himself, or hire
or retain another person to enlist or enter himself, or to go beyond the
limits or jurisdiction of the United States with intent to be enlisted
or entered, in the service of any foreign state, either as a soldier or
as a marine or seaman on board of any vessel of war, letter of marque,
or privateer. And these enactments are also in strict conformity with
the law of nations, which declares that no state has the right to raise
troops for land or sea service in another state without its consent, and
that, whether forbidden by the municipal law or not, the very attempt to
do it without such consent is an attack on the national sovereignty.

Such being the public rights and the municipal law of the United States,
no solicitude on the subject was entertained by this Government when,
a year since, the British Parliament passed an act to provide for the
enlistment of foreigners in the military service of Great Britain.
Nothing on the face of the act or in its public history indicated that
the British Government proposed to attempt recruitment in the United
States, nor did it ever give intimation of such intention to thi