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the nature of that neutral commerce, which has lately in some measure excited the public attention, in consequence of the invectives of Buona-. parte, and the complaints of the American merchants. The Moniteur asserts, that we have declared sugar and coffee to be contraband of war*, and some of our own newspapers, in their accounts of conferences supposed to have taken place between the minister, and the American resident, are scarcely nearer the truth. Our government has been stated to have recalled orders, which never issued, and to have promised concessions, which I believe were never required.

To shew what the subject of controversy, if any controversy actually now depends between the two nations, may probably be, as well as to make the abuses which I have undertaken to delineate more intelligible, I must begin with stating some important historical facts.

The colonizing powers of Europe, it is well known, have always monopolized the trade of their respective colonies; allowing no supplies to be carried to them under any foreign flag, or on account of any foreign importers; and prohibiting the exportation of their produce in foreign ships, or to any foreign country, till it has

* Moniteur of August 16th: London newspapers of the

27th.

been previously brought into the ports of the parent state. Such, with a few trivial and temporary exceptions, has been the universal system in time of peace; and, on a close adherence to this system, the value of colonies in the new world, has been supposed wholly to depend.

In the war which commenced in the year 1756, and was ended by the peace of 1763, France, being hard pressed by our maritime superiority, and unable with safety, either to send the requisite supplies to her West India Islands, or to bring their produce to the European market, under her own mercantile flag, resorted to the expedient of relaxing her colonial monopoly ; and admitted neutral vessels, under certain restrictions, to carry the produce of those islands, to French or foreign >ports in Europe. Of course, it was so carried, either really or ostensibly, on neutral account; the object being to avoid capture on the passage.

But the prize courts of Great Britain, regard<ing this new trade as unwarranted by the rights of neutrality, condemned such vessels as were captured while engaged in it, together with their cargoes; however clearly the property of both might appear to be in those neutral merchants, on whose behalf they were claimed.

As these vessels were admitted to a trade, in which, prior to the war, French bottoms only could be employed, they were considered as

made French by adoption: but the substantial principle of the rule of judgment was this"that a neutral has no right to deliver a belligerent from the pressure of his enemy's hostilities, by trading with his colonies in time of war, in a way that was prohibited in time of peace."

When the facts which I would submit to the attention of the reader are fully before him, the justice and importance of this limitation of neutral commerce, which has sometimes been called, "the rule of the war 1756," will be better under\stood. Yet a general preliminary account of the reasons on which it is founded, seems necessary to the right apprehension of some of those historical facts; I give it, therefore, in the language of one, whose ideas it is always injurious to quote in any words but his own.

"The general rule is, that the neutral has "a right to carry on, in time of war, his accustomed trade to the utmost extent of which "that accustomed trade is capable. Very different is the case of a trade which the neutral has "never possessed, which he holds by no title of

use and habit in times of peace; and which, " in fact, he can obtain in war, by no other title, -"than by the success of the one belligerent "against the other, and at the expence of that very belligerent under whose success he sets up his title; and such I take to be the colonial "trade, generally speaking.

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"What is the colonial trade, generally speak"ing? It is a trade generally shut up to the ex<clusive use of the mother country, to which the "colony belongs; and this to a double use-the "one, that of supplying a market for the con.sumption of native commodities, and the other, "of furnishing to the mother country the peculiar "commodities of the colonial regions: to these " two purposes of the mother country, the gene"ral policy respecting colonies belonging to the "states of Europe, has restricted them.

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With respect to other countries, generally "speaking, the colony has no existence. It is possible that indirectly, and remotely, such "colonies may affect the commerce of other countries. The manufactures of Germany, may find their way into Jamaica or Guadaloupe, and the sugar of Jamaica or Guada"loupe, into the interior parts of Germany; but "as to any direct communication; or advantage "resulting therefrom, Guadaloupe and Jamaica "are no more to Germany, than if they were "settlements in the mountains of the moon. "To commercial purposes they are not in the "same planet. If they were annihilated, it would "make no chasm in the commercial map of Ham"burgh. If Guadaloupe could be sunk in the sea, "by the effect of hostility at the beginning of a war, it would be a mighty loss to France, as

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Jamaica would be to England, if it could be "made the subject of a similar act of violence "but such events would find their way into the chronicles of other countries, as events of disinterested curiosity, and nothing more.

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Upon the interruption of a war, what are the 66. rights of belligerents and neutrals respectively, regarding such places? It is an indubitable "right of the belligerent to possess himself of "such places, as of any other possession of his

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enemy. This is his common right; but he has "the certain means of carrying such a right into effect, if he has a decided superiority at sea. Such colonies are dependant for their existence,

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as colonies, on foreign supplies; if they cannot "be supplied and defended, they must fall to "the belligerent of course: and if the belligerent

chooses to apply his means to such an object, ❝what right has a third party, perfectly neutral, ❝to step in and prevent the execution? No exist

ing interest of his, is affected by it; he can have "no right to apply to his own use the beneficial "consequences of the mere act of the belligerent, "and to say, 'True it is you have, by force of 66 arms, forced such places out of the exclusive "possession of the enemy, but I will share the "benefits of the conquest, and by sharing its be"nefits, prevent its progress. You have in effect, "and by lawful means, turned the enemy out of

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