The markets for their products lay beyond seas, and for their commerce an undisputed right to the peaceful passage of the ocean was necessary.

Yet England and France, prosecuting their own quarrel, fairly ground American shipping as between two millstones.

Our sailors were pressed, our ships seized, their cargoes stolen, under hollow forms of law.

The high seas were treated as though they were the hunting preserves of these nations and American ships were quail and rabbits.

The London "Naval Chronicle" at that time, and for long after, bore at the head of its columns the boastful lines: "The sea and waves are Britain's broad domain, And not a sail but by permission spreads." And France, while vigorously denying the maxim in so far as it related to British domination, was not able to see that the ocean could be no one nation's domain, but must belong equally to all.