respect to the United States, they are really out of court in imposing obligations on us which they have refused to accept themselves, and, whatever complaints we may have had to urge in our dealings with the United States Government, it has never shown a tendency to disregard well-established legal principles. On the contrary, in their conduct in 1798, in spite of their well-known sympathies with France, they declined to refuse to England rights which were secured to her by the law of nations, or to allow to France rights which she had deliberately surrendered by treaty. "The desire of establishing universally the principle that neutral bottoms make neutral goods is perhaps felt by no nation on earth more strongly than by the United States. Perhaps no nation on earth is more deeply interested in its establishment. But the wish to establish a principle is essentially different from a determination that it is already established.
