(11.) Not content with misconstruing the decisions of our Supreme Court, making them a cover for _naval expeditions_ to depredate on our commerce, our whole history is forgotten or misrepresented. It is forgotten, that, as early as 1793, under the administration of Washington, before any Act of Congress on the subject, the National Government recognized its liability, under the Law of Nations, for ships fitted out in its ports to depredate on British commerce; that Washington, in his speech at the opening of Congress, describes such ships as “vessels commissioned or _equipped in a warlike form_ within the limits of the United States,” and also as “military expeditions or enterprises”;[29] and that Jefferson, vindicating this policy of _repression_, said, in a letter to the French Minister, that it was “our wish to preserve the morals of our citizens from being vitiated by courses of lawless plunder and murder”;[30] that, on this occasion, the National Government made the distinction between “munitions of war,” which a neutral might supply in the way of commerce to a belligerent, and “ships of war,” which a neutral was not allowed to supply or even to augment with arms; that Mr. Hammond, the British plenipotentiary at that time, by his letter of 8th May, 1793, after complaining of two French privateers, fitted out at Charleston to cruise against British commerce, expressly declares that “he conceives them to be breaches of that neutrality which the United States profess to observe, and direct contraventions of the proclamation which the President issued,”[31] and that very soon there were criminal proceedings, at British instigation, on account of these privateers, in which it was affirmed by the Court that such ships could not be fitted out in a neutral port without violation of international obligations; that promptly, on the representation of the British Government, a statute was enacted by Congress, in harmony with the Law of Nations, for the better maintenance of our neutrality;[32] that, in 1818, another statute followed in the nature of a Foreign Enlistment Act,[33] afterwards proposed as an example by Lord Castlereagh, when urging a similar statute upon Parliament;[34] that, in 1823, the conduct of the United States on this whole head was presented as a model by Mr. Canning;[35] that, in 1838, during the rebellion in Canada, on the appeal of the British Government, and to its special satisfaction, as was announced in Parliament by Lord Palmerston, at the time Foreign Secretary, our Government promptly declared its purpose “to maintain the supremacy of those laws which were passed to fulfil the obligations of the United States to all friendly nations who may be unfortunately engaged in foreign or domestic war,” and, not satisfied with existing powers, undertook to ask additional legislation from Congress; that Congress proceeded at once to the enactment of another statute, calculated to