That a people, like an individual, should for a time choose to accept a wrong, like impressment or robbery, without forcible resistance implied no necessary discredit. Every nation at one time or another had submitted to treatment it disliked and to theories of international law which it rejected. The United States might go on indefinitely protesting against belligerent aggressions while submitting to them, and no permanent evil need result. Yet a treaty was a compromise which made precedent; it recorded rules of law which could not be again discarded; and above all, it abandoned protest against wrong. This was doubtless the reason why Jefferson wished for no treaties in the actual state of the world; he was not ready to enforce his rights, and he was not willing to compromise them. The treaty signed by Monroe and Pinkney Dec. 1, 1806, was remarkable for combining in one instrument every quality to which Jefferson held most strenuous objections. The three ultimata were all abandoned; impressments were set aside under a diplomatic memorandum which rather recorded the right than restrained its exercise; no indemnity was obtained for the ravages made on American commerce in 1805; and in regard to the colonial trade, a compromise was invented which no self-respecting government could admit. Article XI. of the treaty imposed the condition that West Indian produce, coming from French or Spanish colonies, and _bonâ fide_ the property of United States citizens, might be exported from American ports to Europe on condition that it should have paid to the United States custom-house a duty of not less than two per cent _ad valorem_, which could not be returned in drawback; while European merchandise might in the same way be reexported from the United States to the West Indies, provided it paid not less than one per cent _ad valorem_ in duties to the American Treasury. This provision was only to be compared with Article XII. of Jay’s treaty, in which Lord Grenville insisted and Jay agreed that the United States should export no cotton. Even Pitt had never proposed anything so offensive as the new restriction. He had indeed required that the American merchant whose ship arrived at Baltimore or Boston with a cargo of sugar or coffee from Cuba should unload her, carry the hogsheads and cases into a warehouse, and pass them through all the forms of the American custom-house; after which he must turn about and stow them again on shipboard,--an operation which was usually reckoned as equivalent, in breakage, pilfering, and wages, to a charge of about ten per cent on the value of the cargo; but he had not ventured to levy a duty upon them to be paid to the United States government. One step more, and--as a clever London pamphleteer suggested--the British government would require the American stevedores to wear the King’s livery.[287] Had it been stipulated that the custom-house payments should be taken as full proof of neutrality