Although the health laws of
the States should be found to need no present revisal by Congress, yet
commerce claims that their attention be ever awake to them.
Since our last meeting the aspect of our foreign relations has
considerably changed. Our coasts have been infested and our harbors
watched by private armed vessels, some of them without commissions,
some with illegal commissions, others with those of legal form, but
committing piratical acts beyond the authority of their commissions.
They have captured in the very entrance of our harbors, as well as
on the high seas, not only the vessels of our friends coming to trade
with us, but our own also. They have carried them off under pretense of
legal adjudication, but not daring to approach a court of justice, they
have plundered and sunk them by the way or in obscure places where no
evidence could arise against them, maltreated the crews, and abandoned
them in boats in the open sea or on desert shores without food or
covering. These enormities appearing to be unreached by any control of
their sovereigns, I found it necessary to equip a force to cruise within
our own seas, to arrest all vessels of these descriptions found hovering
on our coasts within the limits of the Gulf Stream and to bring the
offenders in for trial as pirates.
The same system of hovering on our coasts and harbors under color of
seeking enemies has been also carried on by public armed ships to the
great annoyance and oppression of our commerce.
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