The Government condemns in the highest degree the conduct of any of our citizens who may personally engage in committing hostilities at sea against any of the nations parties to the present war, and will exert all the means with which the laws and Constitution have armed them to discover such as offend herein and bring them to condign punishment.… The practice of commissioning, equipping, and manning vessels in our ports to cruise on any of the belligerent parties is equally and entirely disapproved; and the Government will take effectual measures to prevent a repetition of it.--JEFFERSON, _Letter to Mr. Hammond, May 15, 1793_: Writings, Vol. III. p. 559. * * * * * One spot remains which oceans cannot wash out. The slavery of the African race, which the North Americans had inherited from the ancient monarchy, was adopted and fondly cherished by the new Republic.… The logic of the Constitution declared that all men were free: the pride and avarice of the slave-owners, disowning the image of the Creator and the brotherhood of nature, degraded men of a dark color, and even all the descendants of their sons and daughters, to a level with oxen and horses. But as oxen and horses never combine, and have no sense of wronged independence, oxen and horses are better treated than the men and women of African blood.… But neither the philosophical dogma of the authors of the Constitution, nor the strict pedantry of law, can stifle the cry of outraged humanity, nor still the current of human sympathy, nor arrest forever the decrees of Eternal Justice.--LORD JOHN RUSSELL, _Life and Times of Charles James Fox_, Vol. I. pp. 364, 365. * * * * *