the United States unpropitious to the negotiation. The extent of her resources, the number of her allies, the nature of the war in which she was engaged, and her resentments towards the United States, all combined to indispose Great Britain either to acknowledge the wrongs she had committed or to make reparation for them."
It was in this treaty that Mr. Jay proposed to insert a clause "that if it should unfortunately happen that Great Britain and the United States should be at war, there shall be no privateers commissioned by them against each other." Unhappily the clause was considered inadmissible by Lord Grenville, and in fact, although the proposition is embraced in Mr. Jay's original instructions, the American government have receded from the views they then propounded unless other nations exempt private property from capture at sea.[1]
Remarkable omission respecting cotton. It may seem singular that the American minister should have consented to prohibit the exportation of cotton, one of the articles enumerated in the clause relating to the West Indian trade. The explanation is curious. In the original draft of the treaty, the United States minister stipulated to prohibit during the continuance of the article in force, all "West
- ↑ Privateering was finally abolished by the great Powers of Europe March, 30, 1856; but the Americans refused to agree to this unless all private property was made free from capture at sea. The right of blockade was also proposed to be given up. This the English government declined assenting to, asserting "that the system of commercial blockade was essential to its naval supremacy." During the recent civil war in America all the great Powers agreed in disallowing privateering, and it was also forbidden by the Treaty of Washington; hence, when Jefferson Davis announced his intention of issuing "letters of marque," Lincoln replied that the officers and men in any such ships would be shot as pirates.
