ter, but greater in degree, were committed. Taking advantage of the distracted state of affairs on the continent, the enterprising citizens of America had extensively engaged in the carrying trade; and their commerce had increased with so much rapidity, that the jealousy of England was again awakened. Large quantities of American provisions were also shipped to Europe, and especially to France, and to her possessions in the West Indies. The prices paid for which, owing to the continuance of hostilities, afforded handsome profits; but this interfered, very materially, with the determination of England, by means of her maratime supremacy, to starve the French people into an abandonment of their republican notions; and to prevent it, she caused blockades to be declared, which were enforced by no suitable naval power, and orders to be issued, in defiance of the law of nations, requiring neutral vessels to be seized though not carrying articles contraband of war.

"Remonstrance on the part of the authorities of the United States, was of no avail. The example set by England was followed by France-every act of injustice on the one side being succeeded by a still more odious one on the other. The treaty of Amiens, in 1802, afforded the Americans a brief respite; but, on the renewal of the war, in the following year, seizures and condemnations of our vessels became more frequent than ever. England joined the coalition formed to establish continental despotism on a firmer basis, and restore the Bourbon dynasty to the throne

which they had disgraced; and she stopped at nothing to accomplish her purposes. Not content with watching the forts of France, she sent her privateers and vessels of war, under her pirate flag, to hover on our coast, and plunder our commerce. Her navy having been seriously reduced in men, by the long continued warfare in which she had been engaged, she likewise resorted to the impressment of American seamen, to fill up the complements of her crews. Large numbers of sailors were taken from our merchantmen; and, to conclude these high-handed offences, the frigate Chesapeake was despoiled of a portion of her crew, on the twenty-second day of June, 1807."*

While these measures, designed and calculated to destroy the commerce, and cripple the prosperity of the American people, were being systematically pursued on the ocean, the emissaries of Great Britain were covertly at work among the northwestern savages-poisoning their minds, souring their dispositions, inflaming their passions, and preparing them in every way for the resort to arms, which, they foresaw, must eventually take place.

The government of the United States had patiently endured many an act of injustice, during the administration of Washington, Adams and Jefferson. She suffered much in her weakness, which she would not now tolerate in her strength.

Year after year she insisted, through her envoys,

*Jenkins' "Generals of the Last War with Great Britain."

on "the suppression of impressments, and the definition of blockades ;" and when, in 1804, the British minister at Washington, in the name and on the behalf of his sovereign, distinctly recognized the legitimate principles of blockade, the hope was fondly indulged than an amicable arrangement of all existing difficulties and disputes would soon be made.

But this hope proved to be vain and delusive. Great Britain was determined on maintaining her naval superiority, and monopolizing the commerce of the world. She regarded no promise-she respected no obligation. Her plans were soon matured; and she attempted, by one blow, to destroy the merchant marine of the infant republic, then reaping a golden harvest, and humble forever the power and pride of her great rival. In May, 1806, the famous "paper blockade" was signed, closing the ports of France, from Brest to the Elbe, against the ships of neutral nations. No adequate naval force was stationed on the French coast to enforce the blockade; but a fleet was despatched to the shores of the United States, three thousand miles off, to capture every vessel suspected of a design to evade it. This act of aggression on our commerce, for such was its effect and such was its design, was the main moving cause of the war of 1812.

No apology can, or need be offered, for the conduct of France. Yet the blockade of her ports was the excuse or justification, on which, as was natural, she relied, to defend the retaliatory decree promulgated

at Berlin, in the following November. Patience and forbearance still continued to characterize the conduct of the American Government. Though the sanctity of her flag has been disregarded, though numbers of seamen had been impressed from her vessels, and though the national honor had been outraged and insulted by the attack on the Chesapeake, she contented herself with interdicting British armed vessels from entering her harbors. This mild and moderate policy but invited further aggression. On the 11th of November, 1807, the British orders in council were issued; and on the 17th of December in the same year, the French Emperor retaliated, by the Milan decree.*

The United States were now 66 compelled to decide, either to withdraw their sea-faring citizens, and their commercial wealth from the ocean, or to leave the interests of the mariner and the merchant exposed to certain destruction; or to engage in open and active war for the protection and defence of those interests. The principles and the habits of the American government were still disposed to neutrality and peace. In weighing the nature and the amount of the aggressions which had been perpetrated, or which were threatened, if there were any preponderance to determine the balance against one of the belligerent

*The Milan decree was not of course, known to have been issued, in the United States, when the Embargo act of the 22d December, 1807, was passed: but, nevertheless, France was not excepted from its provisions.

powers rather than the other, as the object of a deolaration of war, it was against Great Britain, at least upon the vital interest of impressment, and the obvious superiority of her naval means of annoyance. The French decrees were, indeed, as obnoxious in their formation and design as the British orders; but the government of France claimed and exercised no right of impressment; and the maritime spoliations of France were, comparatively restricted not only by her own weakness on the ocean, but by the constant and pervading vigilance of the fleets of her enemy. The difficulty of selection, the indiscretion of encountering, at once, both of the offending powers; and, above all, the hope of an early return of justice, under the dispensations of the ancient public law, prevailed in the councils of the American government; and it was resolved to attempt the preservation of its neutrality and its peace, of its citizens and its resources, by a voluntary suspension of the commerce and navigation of the United States. It is true, that for the minor outrages committed under the pretext of the rule of war of 1756, the citizens of every denomination had demanded from their government, in the year 1805, protection and redress; it is true, that for the unparalleled enormities of the year 1807, the citizens of every denomination again demanded from their government protection and redress; but it is, also, a truth, conclusively established by every manifestation of the sense of the American people, as well as of their government, that any honorable means of pro