Page:Memoir upon the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America which led to the treaty of 1819.djvu/29

19 Europe, and which takes its date from the end of December, 1815, I renewed, officially, all the complaints, remonstrances, and protests, which I had addressed to the American government, in the course of the first period, and presented many others, for the first time, upon subjects of a similar nature. Piracy against Spanish commerce, began from that moment to assume the most decided character in the United States; and an organized system of pillage and robbery was practised, with an effrontery which has no example in history. This system soon became general, as a branch of speculation, in the principal ports of the Union, and the American merchants devoted themselves to it with the most eager zeal, while the government and judicial tribunals showed themselves insensible, or indifferent, as well to the complaints of individuals, as to those presented by myself or the consuls; and Spanish property, brought in in the captured vessels themselves, or in others under the American flag, ceased not to enter the country, and to swell the mass of publick wealth. The interest of the government conspired with that of the people, to tolerate and protect this lucrative piracy; hence it is, that it has been constantly pursued, even to the present moment, and that even in the most atrocious and legally established cases, in which, to the plunder of Spanish cargoes, and of the clothes and property of the crews and passengers, was sometimes added the