How, and by what organ of the government, whether judiciary or executive, it shall be redressed, is not yet perfectly settled with us.  One of the subordinate courts of admiralty has been of opinion, in the first instance, in the case of the ship William, that it does not belong to the judiciary.  Another, perhaps, may be of a contrary opinion.  The question is still subjudice, and an appeal to the court of last resort will decide it finally.  If finally the judiciary shall declare that it does not belong to the civil authority, it then results to the executive, charged with the direction of the military force of the Union, and the conduct of its affairs with foreign nations.  But this is a mere question of internal arrangement between the different departments of the government, depending on the particular diction of the laws and constitution; and it can in no wise concern a foreign nation to which department these have delegated it.

3.  Mr. Genet, in his letter of July the 9th, requires that the ship Jane, which he calls an English privateer, shall be immediately ordered to depart; and to justify this, he appeals to the 22nd article of our treaty, which provides that it shall not be lawful for any foreign privateer to fit their ships in our ports, to sell what they have taken, or purchase victuals, &c.  The ship Jane is an English merchant vessel, which has been many years employed in the commerce between Jamaica and these States.  She brought here a cargo of produce from that island, and was to take away a cargo of flour.  Knowing of the war when she left Jamaica, and that our coast was lined with small French privateers, she armed for her defence, and took one of those commissions usually called letters of marque.  She arrived here safely without having had any reencounter of any sort.  Can it be necessary to say that a merchant vessel is not a privateer?  That though she has arms to defend herself in time of war, in the course of her regular commerce, this no more makes her a privateer, than a husbandman following his plough in time of war, with a knife or pistol in his pocket, is thereby made a soldier?  The occupation of a privateer is attack and plunder, that of a merchant vessel is commerce and self-preservation.  The article excludes the former from our ports, and from selling what she has taken, that is what she has acquired by war, to show it did not mean the merchant vessel and what she had acquired by commerce.  Were the merchant vessels coming for our produce forbidden to have any arms for their defence, every adventurer who had a boat, or money enough to buy one, would make her a privateer, our coasts would swarm with them, foreign vessels must cease to come, our commerce must be suppressed, our produce remain on our hands, or at least that great portion of it which we have not vessels to carry away, our ploughs must be laid aside, and agriculture suspended.  This is a sacrifice no treaty could ever contemplate, and which we are