The practice began early and was continued constantly; nor did it discriminate among its victims. It is mentioned by Mr. Jefferson, and repeated by an excellent British writer on International Law, that two nephews of Washington, on their way home from Europe, were ravished from the protection of the American flag, without any judicial proceedings, and placed, as common seamen, under the ordinary discipline of British ships of war.[40] The victims were counted by thousands. Lord Castlereagh himself admitted, on the floor of the House of Commons, that an inquiry instituted by the British Government had discovered in the British fleet three thousand five hundred men claiming to be impressed Americans,--claiming only. But while unwilling to accept this large number as all Americans, his Lordship could not deny, “that, in the great extent of the British navy, there were sixteen or seventeen hundred individuals who were there contrary to the wishes of His Majesty’s Government, and who had some rational ground for demanding their liberation, on the ground of their being subjects of the United States,”--which, I take it, is a pleonastic circumlocution to denote that at least sixteen hundred American citizens were originally kidnapped and stolen from American ships on the high seas, to undergo the servitude of the British navy: all of which can be read in the Parliamentary Debates.[41] At our Department of State upwards of six thousand cases were recorded, and it was estimated that at least as many more might have occurred, of which no information had been received.[42] Thus, according to official admission of the British minister, there was reason to believe that the quarter-deck of a British man-of-war had been made a floating judgment-seat three thousand five hundred times, while, according to the records of our own State Department, it had been made a floating judgment-seat six thousand times and upwards, and each time some citizen or other person was taken from the protection of the national flag without any form of trial whatever. If a pretension so intrinsically lawless could be sanctioned by precedent, Great Britain would have succeeded in interpolating it into the Law of Nations. The numbers sacrificed have been often denied on the other side; but candid Englishmen have made admissions which are on record. The “Edinburgh Review,” at a moment when its authority was at its height, and truth prevailed above controversy, said:--