Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/381

 *



depredation were exhibited; so much so that the conduct of the public agents and of the commissioned cruisers surpassed all former examples. American vessels were not only captured under the French decrees, but when brought to trial in the French tribunals, they with their cargoes were condemned, without admitting the owners or their agents to make any defence. Indeed a system of spoliation seems to have been brought into practice for the obvious purpose of insuring condemnations. By a monstrous abuse in judicial proceedings, frauds and falsehoods, as well as flimsy and shameless pretexts, passed unexamined and uncontradicted, and were made the foundation of sentences of condemnation. American citizens were beaten, insulted, and imprisoned; and even their prisoners of war were exchanged with the British for Frenchmen. American property going to or coming from neutral ports was seized, and in many cases forcibly taken when destined for France, or actually in French ports, without any pretence whatever, except that the French required it for their own purposes.

Nor did their wanton and outrageous conduct against the Americans stop here. Many accounts are extant of attempts to effect condemnations by bribing the officers and seamen of the American vessels to swear falsely; and it was further reserved for those days, when offered bribes were refused, and threats despised, to endeavour to accomplish the object by torture. In a protest set forth by Captain Martin, master of the Cincinnatus, a vessel of about two hundred and twenty-nine tons, belonging to Baltimore, the fact of torture having been re