Condemnations of ships in the West Indies, would be regulated by the manner in which they should suffer the English to treat them, thus opening a wide door to spoliation, in defiance of subsisting treaty obligations. At Malaga and Cadiz the French consuls interpreted this unprincipled notification or decree as an authorization to capture and condemn all American merchantmen for the single circumstance of their being destined to a British port. But the most disastrous effect was produced in the West Indies, whose seas swarmed with privateers and gun-boats; which were stimulated into active operation by the latitude allowed to their depredations by the indefinite terms of that decree, and the explanatory orders of the agents of the French directory at Guadaloupe and St. Domingo. These agents captured and confiscated American vessels under the most shameless and contradictory pretexts. All neutral vessels bound to certain enumerated ports, which it was pretended in the decree had been given up to the English, were unceremoniously condemned. The fact of an American vessel being bound to an English port sufficed for her sweeping condemnation, and not unfrequently for that of her cargo. Any informality in a bill of lading; any irregularity in the certified list of the passengers and crew, the supercargo being, for instance, by birth a foreigner, although a naturalised citizen of the United States; the destruction of a paper of any kind soever, and the want of a sea letter, were deemed sufficient to warrant the condemnation of American property, even when the proofs of the property were indubitable.
In the West Indies the most audacious scenes of
