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Adams gave place to Jefferson and Madison, the leaders of a party which frankly and avowedly rejected a navy as an element of national strength, and saw in it only a menace to liberty. Save for the irrepressible marauding of the Barbary corsairs, and the impressment of our seamen by British ships-of-war, the remnant of Adams' ships would not improbably have been swept out of existence.
On the subject of impressment they urged that the question between the two countries had once been honorably and satisfactorily settled, in the treaty negotiated with the British Court by Messrs. Monroe and Pinckney, and that although that treaty had not been ratified by Mr. Jefferson, arrangements might probably again be made.
"And now, gentlemen, I would like to again place before you these stipulations in the treaty existing between America and England which are as yet unfulfilled, and would urge you to engage that they will no longer be neglected," said Mr. Morris, content to have made his point in regard to the impressment of seamen.
Adams, who had denounced Great Britain for the crime of "man-stealing," accepted a treaty of peace which contained not a syllable about impressment.
In such detail, the weight of argument and of probability appears to the writer to rest with the British case; but there is no adequate reply to the final American assertion, which sums up the whole controversy, "that impressment upon the high seas by those to whom that service is necessarily confided must under any conceivable guards be frequently abused;" such abuse being the imprisonment without trial of American citizens, as "a pressed man," for an indefinite period.
"Yes," replied Gascoigne, "and although, as soon as the services of seamen are no longer wanted, you find that there are demagogues on shore who exclaim against impressment, they are quiet enough on the point when they know that their lives and property depend upon sailors' exertions."
I fancied she was jealous even of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to know that she took its impressment into the service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon, in dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist at me once, when those culinary operations were going on, and no one else was looking.
Above all, it made no mention of impressment, of the search of American vessels, and the hindrance of their neutral trade. "Further concessions," wrote Jay to his friends in America, "on the part of Great Britain cannot, in my opinion, be attained. If this treaty fails, I despair of another. I knew and know that no attainable settlement or treaty would give universal satisfaction.
On the day but one following that of the impressment of the Aurora's men, a gun was fired at sunrise by the commodore, blue-peter was hoisted at the fore-royal-mastheads, and the fore-topsails were loosed on board the ships of the convoying squadron, and the still morning air immediately began to resound with the songs of seamen and the clanking of windlass-pawls, as the fleet of merchantmen constituting the convoy began to get under weigh.
The treaty failed to mention such vital issues as the impressment of seamen and the injury to commerce by means of paper blockades, while on the other hand England relinquished its conquest of the Maine coast and its claim to military domination of the Great Lakes.
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