Bill to provide further Remedial Justice in the Courts of the United States. My Lord, No. 1. Mr. Webster to Lord Ashburton. Department of State, Washington, August 29, 1842. I HAVE the honour to inclose a copy of the bill" To provide further Remedial Justice, &c., &c.," as it has passed through both Houses. (Signed) I am, &c., DANIEL WEBSTER. Inclosure in No. 1. In the House of Representatives.-July 9, 1842. Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. An Act to provide further Remedial Justice in the Courts of the BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That either of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, or a judge of any district Court of the United States, in which a prisoner is confined, in addition to the authority already conferred by law, shall have power to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases of any prisoner or prisoners in jail or confinement, where he, she, or they, being subjects or citizens of a foreign State, and domiciled therein, shall be committed or confined, or in custody, under or by any authority or law, or process founded thereon, of the United States, or of any one of them, for or on account of any act done or omitted under any alleged right, title, authority, privilege, protection, or exemption, set up or claimed under the commission, or order, or sanction, of any foreign State or Sovereignty, the validity and effect whereof depend upon the law of nations, or under colour thereof. And upon the return of the said writ, and due proof of the service of notice of the said proceeding to the Attorney-General or other officer prosecuting the pleas of the State under whose authority the petitioner has been arrested, committed, or is held in custody, to be prescribed by the said justice or judge at the time of granting said writ, the said justice or judge shall proceed to hear the said cause; and if, upon hearing the same, it shall appear that the prisoner or prisoners is or are entitled to be I discharged from such confinement, commitment, custody, or arrest, for or by reason of such alleged right, title, authority, privileges, protection, or exemption, so set up and claimed, and the law of nations applicable thereto, and that the same exists in fact, and has been duly proved to the said justice or judge, then it shall be the duty of the said justice or judge forthwith to discharge such prisoner or prisoners accordingly. And if it shall appear to the said justice or judge that such judgment of discharge ought not to be rendered, then the said prisoner or prisoners shall be forthwith remanded: Provided always, That from any decision of such justice or judge an appeal may be taken to the circuit court of the United States for the district in which the said cause is heard; and from the judgment of the said circuit court to the Supreme Court of the United States, on such terms and under such regulations and orders, as well for the custody and appearance of the prisoner or prisoners, as for sending up to the appellate tribunal a transcript of the petition, writ of habeas corpus returned thereto, and other proceedings, as the judge hearing the said cause may prescribe; and pending such proceedings or appeal, and until final judgment be rendered therein, and after final judgment of discharge in the same, any proceeding against said prisoner or prisoners, in any State court, or by or under the authority of any State, for any matter or thing so heard and determined, or in process of being heard and determined, under and by virtue of such writ of habeas corpus, shall be deemed null and void. Passed the Senate, July 8, 1842. Attest: ASBURY DICKINS, Secretary. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LORD ASHBURTON AND MR. WEBSTER, RESPECTING IMPRESSMENT. No. 1. Mr. Webster to Lord Ashburton. Department of State, My Lord, No cause has produced to so great an extent, and for so long a period, disturbing and irritating influences on the political relations of the United States and England, as the impressment of seamen by British cruizers from American merchant vessels. From the commencement of the French Revolution to the breaking out of the war between the two countries in 1812, hardly a year elapsed without loud complaint and earnest remonstrance; a deep feeling of opposition to the right claimed, and to the practice exercised under it, and not unfrequently exercised without the least regard to what justice and humanity would have dictated, even if the right itself had been admitted, took possession of the public mind of America, and this feeling, it is well known, co-operated most powerfully with other causes to produce the state of hostilities which ensued. At different periods, both before and since the war, negotiations have taken place between the two Governments, with the hope of finding some means of quieting these complaints. At some times the effectual abolition of the practice has been requested and treated of; at other times its temporary suspension; and at other times again the limitation of its exercise and some security against its enormous abuses. A common destiny has attended these efforts; they have all failed; the question stands at this moment where it stood fifty years ago. The nearest approach to a settlement was a convention, proposed in 1803, and which had come to the point of signature, when it was broken off, in consequence of the British Government insisting that the narrow seas should be expressly excepted out of the sphere over which the contemplated stipulation against impressment should extend. The American Minister, Mr. King, regarded this exception as quite inadmissible, and chose rather to abandon the negotiation than to acquiesce in the doctrine which it proposed to establish. England asserts the right of impressing British subjects, in time of war, out of neutral merchant vessels, and of deciding by her visiting officers who, among the crews of such merchant vessels, are British subjects. She asserts this as a legal exercise of the prerogative of the Crown, which prerogative is alleged to be founded on the English law of the perpetual and indissoluble allegiance of the subject, and his obligation under all circumstances, and for his whole life, to render military service to the Crown whenever required. This statement made in the words of eminent British jurists shows at once that the English claim is far broader than the basis or platform on which it is raised. The law relied on is English law, the obligations insisted on are obligations existing between the Crown of England and its subjects. This law and these obligations, it is admitted, may be such as England may choose they shall be; but then they must be confined to the parties. Impressment of seamen out of and beyond English territory, and from on board the ships of other nations, is an interference with the rights of other nations; is further, therefore, than English prerogative can legally extend; and is nothing but an attempt to enforce the peculiar law of England beyond the dominions and jurisdiction of the Crown. The claim asserts an extra-territorial authority for the law of British prerogative; and assumes to exercise this extra-territorial authority to the manifest injury and annoyance of the citizens and subjects of other States on board their own vessels on the high seas. Every merchant vessel on the seas is rightfully considered as part of the territory of the country to which it belongs. The entry, therefore, into such vessel being neutral, by a belligerent, is an act of force, and is primà facie a wrong, a trespass, which can be justified only when done for some purpose, allowed to form a sufficient justification by the law of nations. But a British cruizer enters an American merchant vessel, in order to take therefrom supposed British subjects, offering no justification therefor, under the law of nations, but claiming the right under the law of England respecting the king's prerogative; this cannot be defended. English soil, English territory, English jurisdiction, is the appropriate sphere for the operation of English law. The ocean is the sphere of the law of nations, and by that law every merchant vessel on the seas is under the protection of the laws of her own nation, and may claim immunity unless in cases in which that law allows her to be entered and visited. If this notion of perpetual allegiance, and the consequent power of the prerogative, was the law of the world; if it formed part of the conventional code of nations, and was usually practised like the right of visiting neutral ships, for the purpose of discovering and seizing enemy property, then impressment might be defended as a common right, and there would be no remedy for the evils till the national code should be altered; but this is by no means the case. There is no such principle incorporated into the code of nations. The doctrine stands only as English law, not as national law, and English law cannot be of force beyond English dominion. Whatever duties or relations that law creates between the sovereign and his subjects, can be enforced and maintained only within the realm, or proper possessions, or territory of the sovereign. There may be quite as just a prerogative right to the property of subjects as to their personal services in an exigency of the State; but no Government thinks of controlling, by its own laws, property of its subjects situated abroad; much less does any Government think of entering the territory of another Power for the purpose of seizing such property and applying it to its own uses. As laws, the prerogatives of the Crown of England have no obligation on persons or property domiciled or situated abroad. "When therefore," says an authority not unknown or unregarded on either side of the Atlantic, "we speak of the right of a State to bind its own native subjects everywhere, we speak only of its own claim and exercise of sovereignty over them, when they return within its own territorial jurisdiction, and not of its right to compel or require obedience to such laws on the part of other nations within their own territorial sovereignty. On the contrary, every nation has an exclusive right to regulate persons and things within its own territory according to its own sovereign will and public polity." The good sense of these principles, their remarkable pertinency to the subject now under consideration, and the extraordinary consequences resulting from the British doctrine, are signally manifested by that which we see taking place every day. England acknowledges herself overburdened with population of the poorer classes, Every instance of the emigration of persons of those classes is regarded by her as a benefit. England therefore encourages emigration; means are notoriously supplied to emigrants, to assist their conveyance, from public funds; and the New World, and most especially these United States, receive the many thousands of her subjects, thus ejected from the bosom of their native land by the necessities of their condition. They come away from poverty and distress in overcrowded cities, to seek employment, comfort, and new homes, in a country of free institutions, possessed by a kindred race, speaking their own language, and having laws and usages, in many respects like those to which they have been accustomed; and a country which upon the whole is found to possess more attractions for persons of their character and condition than any other on the face of the globe. It is stated that in the quarter of the year, ending with June last, more than 26,000 emigrants left the single port of Liverpool for the United States, being four or five times as many as left the same port within the same period for the British Colonies and all other parts of the world. Of these crowds of emigrants many arrive in our cities in circumstances of great. destitution, and the charities of the country both public and private are severely taxed to relieve their immediate wants. In time, they mingle with the new community in which they find themselves and seek means of living; some find employment in the cities, others go to the frontiers, to cultivate lands reclaimed from the forest; and a greater or less number of the residue becoming in time naturalized citizens, enter into the merchant service under the flag of their adopted country. Now, my Lord, if war should break out between England and a European Power, can anything be more unjust, anything more irreconcileable to the general sentiments of mankind, than that England should seek out these persons thus encouraged by her, and compelled by their own condition, to leave their native homes, tear them away from their new employments, their new political relations, and their domestic connections, and force them to undergo the dangers and hardships of military service, for a country which has thus ceased to be their own country? Certainly, certainly, my Lord, there can be but one answer to this question. Is it not far more reasonable that England should either prevent such emigration of her subjects, or that if she encourage and promote it, she should leave them not to the embroilment of a double and a contradictory allegiance, but to their own voluntary choice, to form such relations, political or social, as they see fit, in the country where they are to find their bread, and to the laws and institutions of which they are to look for defence and protection? A question of such serious importance ought now to be put at rest. If the United States give shelter and protection to those whom the policy of England annually casts upon their shores, if by the benign influences of their Government and institutions, and by the happy condition of the country, those emigrants become raised from poverty to comfort, finding it easy even to become landholders, and being allowed to partake in the enjoyment of all civil rights, if all this may be done, and all this is done, under the countenance and encouragement of England herself, is it not high time, my Lord, that yielding that which had its origin in feudal ideas is inconsistent with the present state of society, and especially with the intercourse and relations subsisting between the Old World and the New, England should at length formally disclaim all right to the services of such persons, and renounce all control over their conduct? But impressment is subject to objections of a much wider range. If it could be justified in its application to those who are declared to be its only objects, it still remains true that in its exercise it touches the political rights of other Governments, and endangers the security of their own |