act complained of is declared to have been an act of the Government itself_.”[253] Weighty words, by which our country is forever bound. The same principle is adopted by Halleck, in his text-book, when he says, “No individual is justly chargeable with the guilt of a personal crime for the act of the community of which he is a member.”[254] All these authorities furnish us the same lesson, and warn against the present proposition. Shall we at the same time violate the Public Faith and wreak a dishonorable vengeance on an innocent traveller or sojourner, making him the scapegoat of his country? Shall we do this outrage to the stranger within our gates? Another argument may be found in the extent to which reprisal on persons has been discarded by modern precedents. It is denounced, not only by authority, but also by practice. I have already said that the proposition to suspend commercial relations is without an example in history. The other proposition is without example since the hateful act of the first Napoleon, condemned afterward by himself, when, at the breaking of the short-lived Peace of Amiens, he seized innocent Englishmen who happened to be in France, and detained them as prisoners, precisely as is now proposed under the present bill. Among the numerous victims of this tyrannical decree was Lord Elgin, the father of the late Sir Frederick Bruce, on his return from Constantinople, where he had been ambassador. There was also an ingenious scholar, of feeble health, but exquisite attainments, Joseph Forsyth, author of one of the best books ever written on Italy.[255] He, too, was seized. In the preface to his admirable work his family have recorded the outrage. Read it, if you would know the judgment that awaits such a transaction. There is also another record in the pages of the English historian who has pictured the events of that time. “This declaration of war was immediately followed by an act as unnecessary as it was barbarous, and which contributed more, perhaps, than any other circumstance to produce that strong feeling of animosity against Napoleon which pervaded all classes of the English during the remainder of the contest. Two French vessels had been captured, under the English letters of marque, in the Bay of Audierne, and the First Consul made it a pretence for ordering the arrest of all the English then travelling in France between the ages of eighteen and sixty years. Under this savage decree, unprecedented in the annals of modern warfare, above ten thousand innocent individuals, who had repaired to France in pursuit of business, science, or amusement, on the faith of the Law of Nations, which never extended hostilities to persons in such circumstances, were at once thrown into prison, from whence great numbers of them were never liberated till the invasion of the Allies in 1814.”[256]