The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 | Page 8

of a nation able to make war.
[Illustration: Martha Washington
From the portrait by James Sharples
This is one of the three Sharples portraits of the Washington family and
the only good profile of Martha Washington that was painted from life.
Martha, who was a few months younger than her husband, is described
as having been "amiable in character and lovely in person." By the
courtesy of the period she was called Lady Washington, and whether in
her own home or at the "federal court," she presided with marked
dignity and grace. She died at Mount Vernon, May 22, 1802, having
survived her husband two and a half years.
Courtesy Herbert L. Pratt]
Admitting the case to be of sufficient importance to require reprisal,
and to be ripe for that step, the power of taking it was vested by the
constitution in congress, not in the executive department of the
government.
Of the reparation for the offence committed against the United States,
they were themselves the judges, and could not be required by a foreign
nation, to demand more than was satisfactory to themselves. By
disavowing the act, by taking measures to prevent its repetition, by
prosecuting the American citizens who were engaged in it, the United
States ought to stand justified with Great Britain; and a demand of
further reparation by that power would be a wrong on her part.
The circumstances under which these equipments had been made, in

the first moments of the war, before the government could have time to
take precautions against them, and its immediate disapprobation of
those equipments, must rescue it from every imputation of being
accessory to them, and had placed it with the offended, not the
offending party.
Those gentlemen were therefore of opinion, that the vessels which had
been captured on the high seas, and brought into the United States, by
privateers fitted out and commissioned in their ports, ought not to be
restored.
The secretaries of the treasury, and of war, were of different opinion.
They urged that a neutral, permitting itself to be made an instrument of
hostility by one belligerent against another, became thereby an
associate in the war. If land or naval armaments might be formed by
France within the United States, for the purpose of carrying on
expeditions against her enemy, and might return with the spoils they
had taken, and prepare new enterprises, it was apparent that a state of
war would exist between America and those enemies, of the worst kind
for them: since, while the resources of the country were employed in
annoying them, the instruments of this annoyance would be
occasionally protected from pursuit, by the privileges of an ostensible
neutrality. It was easy to see that such a state of things could not be
tolerated longer than until it should be perceived.
It being confessedly contrary to the duty of the United States, as a
neutral nation, to suffer privateers to be fitted in their ports to annoy the
British trade, it seemed to follow that it would comport with their duty,
to remedy the injury which may have been sustained, when it is in their
power so to do.
That the fact had been committed before the government could provide
against it might be an excuse, but not a justification. Every government
is responsible for the conduct of all parts of the community over which
it presides, and is supposed to possess, at all times, the means of
preventing infractions of its duty to foreign nations. In the present
instance, the magistracy of the place ought to have prevented them.
However valid this excuse might have been, had the privateers

expedited from Charleston been sent to the French dominions, there to
operate out of the reach of the United States, it could be of no avail
when their prizes were brought into the American ports, and the
government, thereby, completely enabled to administer a specific
remedy for the injury.
Although the commissions, and the captures made under them, were
valid as between the parties at war, they were not so as to the United
States. For the violation of their rights, they had a claim to reparation,
and might reasonably demand, as the reparation to which they were
entitled, restitution of the property taken, with or without an apology
for the infringement of their sovereignty. This they had a right to
demand as a species of reparation consonant with the nature of the
injury, and enabling them to do justice to the party in injuring whom
they had been made instrumental. It could be no just cause of complaint
on the part of the captors that they were required to surrender a
property, the means of acquiring which took their origin in a violation
of the rights of the United States.