Nor do
I see that France can lose by if on the whole. For though she loses
her goods when found in our vessels by the nations with whom we have no
treaties, yet she gains our goods, when found in the vessels of the same
and all other nations: and we believe the latter mass to be greater than
the former. It is to be lamented, indeed, that the general principle has
operated so cruelly in the dreadful calamity which has lately happened
in St. Domingo. The miserable fugitives, who, to save their lives, had
taken asylum in our vessels, with such valuable and portable things as
could be gathered in the moment out of the ashes of their houses and
wrecks of their fortunes, have been plundered of these remains by
the licensed sea-rovers of their enemies. This has swelled, on this
occasion, the disadvantages of the general principle, that 'an enemy's
goods are free prize in the vessels of a friend.' But it is one of those
deplorable and unforeseen calamities to which they expose themselves who
enter into a state of war, furnishing to us an awful lesson to avoid it
by justice and moderation, and not a cause or encouragement to expose
our own towns to the same burnings and butcheries, nor of complaint
because we do not.
6. In a case like the present, where the missionary of one government
construes differently from that to which he is sent, the treaties and
laws which are to form a common rule of action for both, it would be
unjust in either to claim an exclusive right of construction.
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