'If, indeed, the question were entirely new, it would deserve very grave consideration, whether a claim founded on a violation of our neutral jurisdiction could be asserted by private persons, or in any other manner than a direct intervention of the government itself. In the case of a capture made within a neutral territorial jurisdiction, it is well settled that, as between the captors and the captured, the question can never be litigated. It can arise only upon a claim of the neutral sovereign, asserted in his own courts or the courts of the power having cognizance of the capture itself for the purposes of prize. And, by analogy to this course of proceeding, the interposition of our own government right seem fit to have been required before cognizance of the wrong could be taken by our courts. But the practice from the beginning in this class of causes, a period of nearly thirty years, has been uniformly the other way; and it is now too late to disturb it. If any inconvenience should grow out of it, from reasons of state policy or executive discretion, it is competent for Congress to apply at its pleasure the proper remedy.