Great Britain could have broken the circle by increasing the pay and improving the condition of her seamen; but she was excessively conservative, and the burdens already imposed on her commerce were so great that she could afford to risk nothing. In the face of a combined navy like that of Spain and France, her control of the seas at any given point, such as the West Indies, was still doubtful; and in the face of American competition, her huge convoys suffered under great disadvantage. Conscious of her own power, she thought that the United States should be first to give way. Had the American government been willing to perform its neutral obligations strictly, the circle might have been broken without much trouble; but the United States wished to retain their advantage, and preferred to risk whatever England might do rather than discourage desertion, or enact and enforce a strict naturalization law, or punish fraud. The national government was too weak to compel the States to respect neutral obligations, even if it had been disposed to make the attempt. The practice of impressment brought the two governments to a deadlock on an issue of law. No one denied that every government had the right to command the services of its native subjects, and as yet no one ventured to maintain that a merchant-ship on the high seas could lawfully resist the exercise of this right; but the law had done nothing to define the rights of naturalized subjects or citizens. The British government might, no doubt, impress its own subjects; but almost every British sailor in the American service carried papers of American citizenship, and although some of these were fraudulent, many were genuine. The law of England, as declared from time out of mind by every generation of her judges, held that the allegiance of a subject was indefeasible, and therefore that naturalization was worthless. The law of the United States, as declared by Chief-Justice Ellsworth in 1799, was in effect the same;[236] he held that no citizen could dissolve the compact of protection and defence between himself and society without the consent or default of the community. On both sides the law was emphatic to the point that naturalization could not bind the government which did not consent to it; and the United States could hardly require England to respect naturalization papers which the Supreme Court of the United States declared itself unable to respect in a similar case. Nevertheless, while courts and judges declare what the law is or ought to be, they bind only themselves, and their decisions have no necessary effect on the co-ordinate branches of government. While the judges laid down one doctrine in Westminster Hall, Parliament laid down another in St. Stephen’s chapel; and no one could say whether the law or the statute was final. The British statute-book contained Acts of Parliament as old as the reign of Queen Anne[237] to encourage