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By Root 875 0

violation of the laws of nations … accompanied too with cruelties almost unheard of in the history of those barbarous times … warehouses were locked up, and access was denied to the proprietors,” depriving them of the “honest profits of their labours.… Was there known till that moment a more complete act of tyranny than this? … unparalleled in the annals of conquest, but it was surpassed by what followed.” The next step “was to seize upon all their letters and their private papers,” which made it impossible to apply for loans abroad … “merchants and inhabitants plundered and robbed of all that they possessed in the world and of all the hopes that they had of having their property restored.” In his compassion for the beggared merchants, living with their silver and servants and bulging warehouses, Burke seemed unmoved by their trading with the enemy. He said not a word about this aspect or the fact that the account books had been seized for that reason. Because the affair was being used to accuse the government, he made no attempt to be objective.

When, in his long speech, Burke came to Rodney’s treatment of the Jews, he showed the interest of a wide-ranging mind. Speaking of the order exiling them on one day’s notice, without their property and without wives and children, he described their vulnerability through statelessness eighty years before the Jews themselves were to formulate the nature of their problem. “If Britons are injured,” said Burke, “Britons have armies and laws to fly to for protection and justice. But the Jews have no such power and no such friend to depend on. Humanity then must become their protector and ally.” Burke perceived the problem, if not the solution in statehood. That had to wait for the next century, for Burke was not concerned with the Jewish problem but with the wrongdoing of his own government embodied by Rodney. His motion precipitated a vigorous debate about whether there was or was not a recognized law of nations.

Lord George Germain spoke as Rodney’s principal defender, saying that Burke showed himself a “perfect stranger” to the conduct of war, as there was scarcely an island captured or a territory seized that had not suffered the same circumstances as the “unavoidable and common consequences of capture” which, however “humanity might recoil at them,” could not be prevented; that the Dutch had made the island a very depot for the use of Britain’s enemies; “that without regular supplies from this island the French could not have carried on the war,” no more so the Americans; that when Rodney, in “great distress for rigging and stores” after the storms of October, had applied to purchase rope at St. Eustatius, he had been refused on the pretext that they had very little left when in fact they had several thousand tons in their store—enough to supply all the shipping that could have needed any for years to come; that as regards the confiscations, private property had been sealed and marked to show ownership to wait for disposition by the courts; that, in short, he “found nothing to blame in the conduct of the commanders.”

The debate swelled into the open in heated prosecution and defense. Charles James Fox, who had a lashing tongue for invective, began. With an elaborate bow to the persons and character of Sir George Rodney and General Vaughan, for whom he was sure the honorable gentleman who moved the inquiry (Mr. Burke) professed and “felt as sincere a regard as any men upon earth could possibly do,” he stated that their personal responsibility was not at issue, “but to pronounce on the great national question”—the reputation of Britain: “Would the nations of Europe wait for the slow decision of the Admiralty courts before they pronounced judgment on the case and proceeded to retaliate …? without taking the trouble to inquire … whether it was the lust of plunder or the profligate cruelty of an insatiate military or the barbarous system of a headlong government, they would instantly and justly pronounce it to be a violation of all the laws of war on the part of Great Britain and would