Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1. Alfred Thayer Mahan
proportionate to the magnitude of the wrong; and the instructions given to Jay,107 as special envoy in 1794, while covering many points at issue, does not mention this, which eventually overtopped all others.
CHAPTER III
FROM JAY'S TREATY TO THE ORDERS IN COUNCIL
While there were many matters in dispute between the two countries, the particular occasion of Jay's mission to London in 1794 was the measures injurious to the commerce of the United States, taken by the British Government on the outbreak of war with France, in 1793. Neutrals are certain to suffer, directly and indirectly, from every war, and especially in maritime wars; for then the great common of all nations is involved, under conditions and regulations which by general consent legalize interference, suspension, and arrest of neutral voyages, when conflicting with acknowledged belligerent rights, or under reasonable suspicion of such conflict. It was held in the United States that in the treatment of American ships Great Britain had transcended international law, and abused belligerent privilege, by forced construction in two particulars. First, in June, 1793, she sent into her own ports American vessels bound to France with provisions, on the ground that under existing circumstance these were contraband of war. She did indeed buy the cargoes, and pay the freight, thus reducing the loss to the shipper; but he was deprived of the surplus profit arising from extraordinary demand in France, and it was claimed besides that the procedure was illegal. Secondly, in November of the same year, the British Government directed the seizure of "all ships laden with goods the produce of any colony belonging to France, or carrying provisions or other supplies for the use of any such colony." Neutrals were thus forbidden either to go to, or to sail from, any French colony for purposes of commercial intercourse. For the injuries suffered under these measures Jay was to seek compensation.
The first order raised only a question of contraband, of frequent recurrence in all hostilities. It did not affect the issues which led to the War of 1812, and therefore need not here be further considered. But the second turned purely on the question of the intercourse of neutrals with the colonies of belligerents, and rested upon those received opinions concerning the relations of colonies to mother countries, which have been related in the previous chapters. The British Government founded the justification of its action upon a precedent established by its own Admiralty courts, which, though not strictly new, was recent, dating back only to the Seven Years' War, 1756-63, whence it had received the name of the Rule of 1756. At that time, in the world of European civilization, all the principal maritime communities were either mother countries or colonies. A colonial system was the appendage of every maritime state; and among all there obtained the invariable rule, the formulation of which by Montesquieu has been already quoted, that "commercial monopoly is the leading principle of colonial intercourse," from which foreign states were rigorously excluded. Dealing with such a recognized international relation, at a period when colonial production had reached unprecedented proportions, the British courts had laid down the principle that a trade which a nation in time of peace forbade to foreigners could not be extended to them, if neutrals, in time of war, at the will and for the convenience of the belligerent; because by such employment they were "in effect incorporated in the enemy's navigation, having adopted his commerce and character, and identified themselves with his interests and purposes."108
During the next great maritime war, that of American Independence, the United States were involved as belligerents, and the only maritime neutrals were Holland and the Baltic States. These drew together in a league known historically as the Armed Neutrality of 1780, in opposition to certain British interpretations of the rights of neutrals and belligerents; but in their formulated demands that of open trade with the colonies of belligerents does not appear, although there is found one closely cognate to it,—an asserted right to coasting trade, from port to port, of a country at war. The Rule of 1756 therefore remained, in 1793, a definition of international maritime law laid down by British courts, but not elsewhere accepted; and it rested upon a logical deduction from a system of colonial administration universal at that period. The logical deduction may be stated thus. The mother country, for its own benefit, reserves to itself both the inward and outward trade; the products of the colony, and the supplying of it with necessaries. The carriage of these commodities is also confined to its own ships. Colonial commerce and navigation are thus each a national monopoly. To open to neutrals the navigation, the carriage of products and supplies, in time of war, is a war measure simply, designed to preserve a benefit endangered by the other belligerent. As a war measure, it tends to support the financial and naval strength of the nation employing it; and therefore, to an opponent whose naval power is capable of destroying that element of strength, the stepping in of a neutral to cover it is clearly an injury. The neutral so doing commits an unfriendly act, partial between the two combatants; because it aids the one in a proceeding, the origin and object of which are purely belligerent.
When the United States in 1776 entered the family of nations, she came without colonies, but in the war attendant upon her liberation she had no rights as a neutral. In the interval of peace, between 1783 and 1793, she had endeavored, as has been seen, to establish between herself and the Caribbean region those conditions of open navigation which were indicated as natural by the geographical relations of the two and their several products. This had been refused by Great Britain; but France had conceded it on a restricted scale, plainly contrived, by the limitation of sixty tons on the size of vessels engaged, to counteract any attempt at direct carriage from the islands to Europe, which was not permitted. Under these circumstances the United States was brought into collision with the Rule of 1756, for the first time, by the Order in Council of November 6, 1793. A people without colonies, and with a rapidly growing navigation, could have no sympathy with a system, coextensive with Europe, which monopolized the carriage of colonial products. The immediate attitude assumed was one of antagonism; and the wrong as felt was the greater, because the direct intercourse between the United States and the then great French colonies was not incidental to war, but had been established in peace. In principle, the Rule rested for its validity upon an exception made in war, for the purposes of war.
The British Government in fact had overlooked that the Rule had originated in European conditions; and, if applicable at all to the new transatlantic state, it could only be if conditions were the same, or equivalent. Till now, by universal usage, trade from colonies had been only to the mother country; the appearance of an American state with no colonies introduced two factors hitherto non-existent. Here was a people not identified with a general system of colonial exclusiveness; and also, from their geographical situation, it was possible for a European government to permit them to trade with its colonies, without serious trespass on the privileges reserved to the mother country. The monopoly of the latter consisted not only in the commerce and carrying trade of the colony, but in the entrepôt; that is, in the receipt and storage of the colonial produce, and its distribution to less favored European communities,—the profit, in short, of the middleman, or broker. France had recognized, though but partially, this difference of conditions, and in somewhat grudging manner had opened her West Indian ports to American vessels, for intercourse with their own country. This trade, being permitted in peace, did not come under the British Rule; therefore by its own principle the seizures under it were unlawful. Accordingly, on January 8, 1794, the order was revoked, and the application limited to vessels bound from the West Indies direct to Europe.
This further Order in Council preserved the principle of the Rule of 1756, but it removed the cause of a great number of the seizures which had afflicted American shipping. There were nevertheless, among these, some cases of vessels bound direct to France from French colonies, laden with colonial produce; one of which was the first presented to Jay on his arrival in London. In writing to the Secretary of State he says, "It unfortunately happens that this is not among the strongest of the cases;" and in a return made three years later to Congress, of losses recovered under the treaty, this vessel's name does not appear. In the opinion of counsel, submitted to Jay, it was unlikely that the case would be reversed on appeal, because it unequivocally fell under the Rule.109 It is therefore to be inferred that this principle, the operation of which was revived so disastrously in 1805, was not surrendered by the British Government in 1794. In fact, in the discussions between Mr. Jay and the British Minister
American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. i. p. 472.
Wheaton's International Law, p. 753.
American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. i. p. 476.