Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/133

Rh cause of America herself, inasmuch as it is the duty of this country to preserve a strict neutraUty/' To the objections raised that no precedent for the assump- tion of jurisdiction by a Court of Admiralty could be found, he replied that these privateers had gone further than any one before: "After injuring oiu* trade by watching oflf our rivers and bays for vessels, after mak- ing a capture in our territory, they had added insult to injury and brought the prize to the very seat of government — an act altogether unprecedented for audacity," Lewis and Rawle believe, wrote Alex- ander Hamilton to Rufus King, "'that the District or Admiralty Court will take cognizance of this question. They argue that it would be a great chasm in the law that there should not be some competent judicial authority to do justice between parties in the case of an illegal seizure within our jurisdiction. . . . That though, as a general principle, a Court of a neutral na- tion will not examine the question of prize or not prize between belligerent powers, yet this principle must except the case of the infraction of the jurisdiction of the neutral power itself. . . . This is their reasoning, and it has much force. The desire of the Executive is to have the point ascertained."^ To the consternation of the President, Judge Richard Peters decided that the Court was not vested with power to inquire into the legality of the prize. While "anxious for the i>eace and dignity of my country", he stated that "not con- sidering the Court in this instance the vindicator of the rights of the Nation, I leave in better hands the discussion on the subject of National insult and the remedy for an invasion of territorial rights." The President was unwilling to accept this decision of an inferior Court as final; accordingly, he directed the

^ HamUUm, X, letter of June 15, 1793.