Sir William Scott and the Essex

Abstract

FEW admiralty decisions have had the impact of the verdict that confirmed condemnation of the American ship Essex in i805. This case opened a British-American controversy over the rights of commerce that did not end for over a decade and was largely responsible for the War of i8i2. More fundamentally, the Essex decision was a sign of broad changes in the entire maritime policy of Great Britain. Although the often challenged Rule of I756 remained a keystone of policy, from i795 to i804 the British government dealt comparatively tolerantly with neutral commerce. More and more, however, English statesmen and publicists began to seek a course that would strike more harshly at France and, if possible, prove profitable to England. The Essex case was the most important of several indications in i804 and I805 that a change was under way, that truculence was becoming the order of the day, that no squeamr. ish concern for the interests of neutrals would be allowed to impinge upon military and economic policy. A notable figure in the period down to i804 was Sir William Scott, justice of the High Court of Admiralty, whose decisions set the tenor of policy. Scott was neither pronor anti-American; he was often able to keep separate his judicial and political opinions; and he represents responsible conservatism in the days of the great struggle against France. It is worth while to review his career and to reconsider the Essex case. For, although few aspects of American diplomatic history have been as intensively studied as the chain of events culminating in Madison's war message of June i, i8i2, our knowledge of many British developments in this period remains clouded. After several years as an Oxford lecturer in ancient history, William Scott shifted to the law. He became a specialist in ecclesiastic and maritime practice, a common pairing logical because of the somewhat similar procedures of those two branches of the law. In i789 Scott became AdvocateGeneral and the share of prize moneys that came to him in this post soon made him a wealthy man. In i798 Scott mounted the bench as judge of * Mr. Perkins is a member of the Department of History of the University of California, Los Angeles.