ditch which served to encompass them; it is still open under his feet. Scattered ruins of houses laid waste, which the fire had partly respected, in order to leave monuments of British fury, are still to be found.-Men still exist, who can say, here a ferocious Englishman slaughtered my father; there my wife tore her bleeding daughter from the hands of án unbridled Englishman. Alas! the soldiers who fell under the sword of the Britons are not yet reduced to dust: the labourer, in turning up his field, still draws from the bosom of the earth their whitened bones; while the ploughman, with tears of tenderness and gratitude, still recollects that his fields, now covered with rich harvests, have been moistened with French blood; while every thing around the inhabitants of this country, animates them to speak of the tyranny of Great Britain and of the generosity of Frenchmen; when England has declared a war of death to that nation, to avenge herself for its having cemented with its blood the independence of the United States.-It was at this moment their government made a treaty of amity with their ancient tyrant, the implacable enemy of their ancient ally. O! Americans covered with noble scars! O! you who have so often flown to death and to victory with French soldiers! You who know those generous sentiments which distinguish the true warriour! Whose hearts have always vibrated with those of your companions in arms! Consult them to-day to know what they experience; recollect at the same time, that if magnanimous souls with liveliness resent an affront, they also know how to forget one. Let your government return to itself, and you will still find in Frenchmen faithful friends and generous allies. Done at Philadelphia, the 25th Brumaire, 5th year of the French Republick, one and indivisible (15th November, 1796, O. S.)

P. A. ADET.

Notes in support of the foregoing.

(No. 1.) See letter from citizen Genet to Mr. Jefferson of 22d June, 1793, massage from the President, page fifteen of the original French.

(No. 2.) Extract of the President's speech to the House of Representatives, 3d December, 1793.

-As soon as the war in Europe had embraced those powers with whom the United States have the most extensive relations, there was reason to apprehend that our intercourse with them might be interrupted, and our dispo sition for peace drawn into question by the suspicions too often entertained by belligerent nations. It seemed therefore to be my duty, to admonish our citizens of the conse quences of a contraband trade, and of hostile acts to any of the parties; and to obtain, by a declaration of the existing legal state of things, an easier admission of our right to the immunities belonging to our situation. Under these impressions the proclamation which will be laid before you, was issued.

In this posture of affairs, both new and delicate, I resolved to adopt general rules, which should conform to the treaties, and assert the privileges of the United States. These were reduced into a system, which will be communicated to you. Although I have not thought myself at liberty to forbid the sale of the prizes, permitted by our treaty of commerce with France to be brought into our ports, I have not refused to cause them to be restored when they were taken within the protection of our territory, or by vessels commissioned or equipped in a warlike form within the limits of the United States.

It rests with the wisdom of Congress to correct, improve, or enforce this plan of procedure; and it will probably be found expedient to extend the legal code, and the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States to many cases, which, though dependent on principles already recognised, demand some further provisions.

Where individuals shall within the United States, array themselves in hostility against any of the powers at war, or enter upon military expeditions or enterprises within the jurisdiction of the United States, or usurp and exercise judicial authority within the United States, or where the penalties on violations of the law of nations may have been indistinctly marked, or are inadequate, these offences cannot receive too early and close an attention, and require. prompt and decisive remedies.

Whatever those remedies may be, they will be well administered by the judiciary, who possess a long established course of investigation, effectual process, and officers in the habit of executing it.

(No. 3.) The undersigned minister plenipotentiary having complained to the Secretary of State, that the attorney of the United States had caused the privateer La Vengeance to be arrested, without an affidavit or other authentick testimony; on the 11th Aug. 1795, the Secretary of State sent him an answer which Mr. Troup had addressed to him in the absence of Mr. Harrison, district attorney of New York, in which is this passage

"As to the suit against the privateer, it was commenced by Mr. Harrison as attorney for the district, upon an official disclosure to him, by the Spanish consul, of the evidence which led him to suppose the privateer had been fitted out and armed within the United States. Mr. Harrison, upon receiving this disclosure, felt himself called upon by considerations which, as a publick officer, he could not resist, to proceed against the privateer under the third section of the act of Congress entitled, An act in addition to the act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States passed 5th June, 1794. This section works a forfeiture of the privateer, one half to the use of any person who shall give information of the of fence, and the other half to the use of the United States. No person having appeared in quality of informer, to institute the suit, Mr. Harrison, according to the course of the common law, filed an information in behalf of the United States solely against the privateer, as you will perceive by the copy of the information already transmitted to you. No law of the United States, and no law or usage of this state required the information to be founded upon any previous affidavit or evidence of the truth of the matters alleged in it. The filing of an information is an act entirely in the discretion of the officer intrusted by law with the power of doing it; and if he should abuse his power, he stands upon the footing of all publick officers who are guilty of malversation in office. In the present instance, Mr. Harrison has acted from the best of his judgment upon the duty of his office, after officially obtaining information from a publick officer, who conceived himself likewise bound by a sense of duty to communicate the information."

When the undersigned minister plenipotentiary renewed the charge on the 3d Vindemiaire, 4th year (24th Sept. 1795) to the Secretary of State, and still complained

that an affidavit was not required to cause a privateer to be arrested-he [the minister] expressed himself in these words:

"But I again recur to the assertion that an affidavit is not necessary for ordering the arrest of a vessel."

"What is the law, what is the usage, which establishes the prosecution for reparation of an offence, before it be ascertained that it has been committed; and what certainty then had Mr. attorney? His opinion! Upon what is it founded? The complaint of the Spanish agent, since there was not a single affidavit."

"Now, sir, upon mere suspicions which the enemy interest will not fail always to bring forward, the French privateers are to be subjected to seizure! Such a measure tends to nothing less than to paralize the seventeenth artiele of our treaty."

The Secretary of State, in reply, sent to the undersigned minister plenipotentiary the copy of a letter from Mr. Harrison, of the 3d October, 1795, in which is this remarkable passage-"In this whole business, however, I have undoubtedly acted from my own opinion, founded upon such evidence as came to my knowledge; and as in similar cases, I must necessarily, in the first instance, be unacquainted with the opinions and convictions of others, I know of no other rule by which I can be guided, unless when I am honoured with the directions of the chief execu tive magistrate."

The Secretary of State thus closes his letter on the 16th of October covering that of Mr. Harrison

"You will perceive, that whatever may be the event of the suits pending in court concerning her [the privateer] and her prize, the publick officer, Mr. Harrison, is supported in his proceedings by the laws and usages of this country, upon such evidence and information as in the case. referred to were produced."

(No. 4.) In virtue of this law, the tribunals were only authorized to decide on cases in which the neutrality of the United States shall have been compromitted. Yet these tribunals conceived they had a right to pronounce upon prizes made by the French, in almost an indefinitive manner. In the affair of Glass and Gibbs against the ship Betsey, the decision of which has been printed, the Supreme Court pronounced, that the tribunals could de

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cide whether a prize belonged to enemies or to neutrals. in the affair of Joost Janson against the Dutch ship Vrouw Catharina Magdalena, it was decided that the naturalization granted in the territories of France to American citizens, during the war, could not give them the right, either of serving or of commanding on board of French privateers; that the prizes made by such, although legally commissioned, were not valid; a distinction is established between a legal and an illegal privateer; it was judged that they had a right to pronounce on this legality, and consequently on the validity of the prizes; it was finally decided, that a prize made at sea with the assistance of an illegal privateer, was void and should be restored.

It was according to these first decisions of the supreme court that the district attorney of Virginia wrote officially, on the 28th March, 1794, to the vice consul at Norfolk"No vessel can be condemned as prize but in district courts, which are the proper admiralties of the United States." The enemies of France understood, or did not understand this mode; but they availed themselves of it; and in order to cause French privateers to be arrested, they had recourse to the law of 5th June, 1794.

At this period, however, the law had put into the hands of government a sufficient power for preventing the arming and equipping of privateers in the ports of the United States. By the letter of the Secretary of the Treasury of the 4th of August, 1793, the collectors of the customs were authorized, and even required, to visit, in the strictest manner, not only all privateers, but all vessels entering or going out of American ports. The law of 5th June authorized the President to support the exercise of these functions with military force. Of course they did not neglect to visit, with the greatest rigour, all French vessels, privateers and others, during their continuance in the ports of the United States, and at their departure. They did not quit these ports but under the eye and with the express permission of the officers of the government; for it had forbidden the collectors to clear them, if they committed the least violation on the neutrality of the United States, in which case they might be seized and confiscated. Yet, whether they had entered the ports of the United States armed, and also went out armed; or had since been armed for war in French ports, scarcely did one of their