the formation of a joint commission to settle mutual claims between the
two countries, from which those for the depredations before mentioned
should be excluded. The proposition, in that very unsatisfactory form,
has been declined.

The United States did not present the subject as an impeachment of the
good faith of a power which was professing the most friendly
dispositions, but as involving questions of public law of which the
settlement is essential to the peace of nations; and though pecuniary
reparation to their injured citizens would have followed incidentally
on a decision against Great Britain, such compensation was not their
primary object. They had a higher motive, and it was in the interests of
peace and justice to establish important principles of international
law. The correspondence will be placed before you. The ground on which
the British minister rests his justification is, substantially, that the
municipal law of a nation and the domestic interpretations of that law
are the measure of its duty as a neutral, and I feel bound to declare my
opinion before you and before the world that that justification can not
be sustained before the tribunal of nations. At the same time, I do not
advise to any present attempt at redress by acts of legislation. For the
future, friendship between the two countries must rest on the basis of
mutual justice.

From the moment of the establishment of our free Constitution the
civilized world has been convulsed by revolutions in the interests of
democracy or of monarchy, but through all those revolutions the United
States have wisely and firmly refused to become propagandists of
republicanism. It is the only government suited to our condition; but
we have never sought to impose it on others, and we have consistently
followed the advice of Washington to recommend it only by the careful