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.
