26 ENGLISH NEUTRALITY. dominions of warlike expeditions and armaments against either belligerent; we see also, from the law and practice of Great Britain in other cases, that all facilities for this purpose exist in that kingdom, and that they may be and have been employed by the authorities of their own motion ; and we gather, from the spirit and language of the Memoire Justificatif, that, in 1779, Great Britain considered that the practice of casting upod the representatives of the offended belligerent—strangers in the land—all the burden of proving the guilty character of such enterprises before any intervention of the neutral government can be obtained, is but little better than a fraudulent evasion of international duties. We gather also that America, in 1793, and at all times since, has acted in good faith upon the same opinion, always interposing at the request of foreign powers and requiring its own officers to be vigilant and positive in the effort to detect and suppress unneutral preparations ; and that as between this nation and Great Britain the latter has demanded and we have always rendered the fullest and freest performance of neutral obligations. It is also seen that by reason and usage the failure of a neutral nation to perform in good faith, and to the best of its ability, its obligations in this respect, is deemed to sustain a claim for compensation for all pecuniary damage growing out of its derelictions ; and even to justify reprisals and absolute war. Yet, nothwithstanding all this, we find that Great Britain has permitted, within her harbors and domain, the fitting out of armaments notoriously intended to cruise against our commerce ; and that the hostile armament has been permitted to sail unopposed from English shores upon its criminal business of lighting up the seas with burning merchantmen, days after the government had been in possession of what itself admitted to be sufficient proof of its clandestine character. Indeed, on the contrary from the Alabama being opposed, it is stated by the press, that the officials of the “circumlocution office,” in the prosecution of the great business of “ How not to do it,” decided upon the value of a breach of the law of nations, by receiving a bond of twenty thousand pounds as the consideration and indemnification for permitting the Alabama to proceed to sea, thus making the British nation a partner in her crimes and surety for all her acts of pecuniary damage. And the only excuse for this unprecedented fraud is drawn from the
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