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ances from France accompanied it. For nearly a twelvemonth, in fact, Napoleon refrained from enforcing that decree against our vessels, in the hope of drawing the 1807. United States, the chief of neutral powers, into his net. But this hope failing, and the peace of Tilsit releasing troops enough to establish a coast police such as he desired, he began to put the Berlin Decree into execution by vigorously enforcing against the United States its harshest penalties, one of which attached, under a ruling of Reguier, the French minister of justice, to all merchandise derived from England and her colonies, by whomsoever owned, and even when on board neutral vessels. The American ship Horizon, stranded upon the French coast, was accordingly confiscated, with her cargo, in the French prize court, and numerous other seizures and confiscations of American property, British in origin, followed. The French treaty of 1800 was nullified by France. Armstrong sought redress in vain. "All the difficulties which have given rise to your reclamations," responded Champagny, the imperial scribe, promoted to the head of foreign affairs, "would be removed with ease if the government of the United States, after complaining in vain of the injustice and violations of England, took, with the whole Continent, the part of guaranteeing itself therefrom."*

Nov. 10.

The Horizon case was decided within twenty-four hours of the date borne by the new British Orders in Council we have referred to; these last not being officially promulNov. 17. gated, however, until several days later; and between the two belligerents there seemed to be only a choice of deaths left to American commerce. But this was not the last blow to our neutral rights; for, as if to retaliate upon retaliation, Bonaparte now supplemented his Berlin Decree by a Dec. 17. new one, dated at Milan, declaring every vessel which submitted to search by British cruisers, or paid tax, duty, or license-money to the British government, or was found on the high seas or elsewhere bound to or from any British port, denationalized and forfeited. Similar decrees were immediately

* Lyman's Diplomacy; Executive Documents.

1837.

NAPOLEON'S MILAN DECREE.

155

issued by Spain and Holland, passive instruments of Napoleon's will. But cunningly assuming to be the generous champion of weaker commercial powers against British despotism, the Emperor promised that these measures should cease as to all nations which should have the firmness to compel England to respect their flag; and that the decree itself would be null as soon as England should abide once more by belligerent principles of the law of nations.

Looking back through the vista of years upon that terrible encounter, which shook the whole civilized world, we cannot but admire England's steadfast courage in opposing the great conqueror and autocrat of the age. We see her beating him off from the ocean, and wheeling round the land in her solitary flight to spy out some spot on which she may alight to give battle, the talisman of royalty in her beak, and spell-bound, despairing sovereigns below. If not the world's last hope, the "fast-anchored isle" had, at all events, become the last bulwark of royal Europe, and but for British constancy the balance of power would have been lost. The false glamour has now disappeared from the name of Napoleon. He was not the scourge of kings so much as the enemy of mankind. As liberty's vicegerent he glittered only by the insignia of which he had robbed her temple; the glory of his arms redounded not to his countrymen, not to France, but to his own imperial gratification; he overturned thrones, not like Attila in disdain of them, but in order that he might supplant legitimacy by illegitimacy, and pile costly pomp upon pomp. Against this consummate warrior and organizer of oppression England stood bravely, when all else was ruin. Corrupt, greedy, unscrupulous of means, she pushed, nevertheless, defiantly on. The younger Pitt himself, cold and haughty as he showed himself to America, and conscientious blunderer in his management of foreign relations, moves our compassion when we think of him crushed by Austerlitz, and dying of a broken heart, which refused to surrender. The iron of that character without its genius and virtue, but with a caustic humor which alleviated better the burdens of office, was in Canning, Pitt's disciple. But British antipathy to Napoleon did not originate in Napoleon's usurpations; it commenced with the revolution

that gave him the opportunities of greatness, with deep-seated national rivalries, for which the Corsican could not be blamed. As First Citizen of France Bonaparte's claims were indisputable; but England had challenged them, detesting French Republic and Empire alike. And hence the contest, ceasing and then recommencing with such violence that,amity between the principals was impossible, affected America with peculiar sensations. We were the rock which each wished to hurl at the other, a convenient missile, and no more.

One principal was an old foe, the other a false friend; with neither's object had we really cause for active sympathy. Peace was our interest, and peace we sought sincerely. In pursuing one another, too, the contestants were like the genie and princess who practiced magic; if one took the shape of a scorpion the other became a serpent, and woe to the spectator who advanced too near. The United States was bound by every instinct to stand aside from such a contention, leave the dynasties of Europe to themselves, and maintain a just neutrality. If forced from that position reason and passion must have prompted a resistance to that belligerent from whose inflictions it chiefly suffered. The measure of such resistance would naturally be the redress of our grievances, independently of such incidental advantages as the other belligerent might derive. Even the European sovereignties which were swallowed into this mad vortex, in which they struggled for dear life, found themselves swirling about in combination and recombination, catching now at a French alliance, now at an English. Into that vortex it was not fit that this republic should enter without the gravest necessity.

This trilogy of neutral prohibitions-the Berlin Decree, the British Orders in Council, and the Milan Decree-must henceforth supply the situations which bring this country upon the great European war theatre. And the foreign policy of the United States for the next five years turns upon the constant endeavor of this nation to make England or France, one or both, relax its unjust prohibition, or else suffer the cousequences of America's resentment.

Such was the policy for our Tenth Congress to deliberate

1807.

TENTH CONGRESS ASSEMBLES.

157

Oct. 26.

upon. The President had convened the two Houses several weeks earlier than usual on account of grave and weighty matters. It was a Jefferson Congress as usual, without positive leaders in either House, but having an overwhelming majority prepared to accede to whatever the administration might propose, and confident of the President's individual judgment almost to superstition. The Federalists had brains but not polls; for three States alone--Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware-were represented by that party in the Senate, one of those Senators, John Quincy Adams, being on the point of breaking from it; while less than thirty, including Randolph's squad, voted with the opposition in the House. Of new men in this Congress William H. Crawford, who was seated as a Senator from Georgia, rose in after years to the chief renown. The House leadership remained vacant. Wilson C. Nicholas came back to fill the post, succeeding to the seat of Thomas M. Randolph; but, like most elderly men who have been long out of the legislature, he showed himself inapt, and the President was soon searching in other directions.* An orator for the Republican side, who could overmatch Quincy and Randolph in debate, was not easily found, nor did one appear for some years longer. The sensible Eppes, whose marriage alliance hindered more than it helped to advance him politically with a President averse to nepotism, approached nearest, perhaps, to that distinction, while George W. Campbell, of Tennessee, another member of experience and rising fame, took the post of honor as Chairman of the Ways and Means. The North received its share of honors in the organization of the House, and Varnum, of Massachusetts, was chosen Speaker over his scattering competitors.

The Quids, as John Randolph's little band was called, had dwindled down to four or five. Nicholson had left Congress; doubters who returned, like Macon, of Georgia, the late Speaker, were now sent to the rear. A reorganization of the Ways and Means, late in the preceding Congress, had thrown Randolph out of influence, and in the organization of

* See Jefferson's Writings, January, 1808, where the opportunity is pressed, but in vain, upon William Wirt.

this Congress he was stripped entirely, never again, during his long and brilliant career in the House, taking a responsible part in legislation.

The Chesapeake affair had been the chief occasion of this early summons. But when Congress assembled and organized decisive dispatches from London had not arrived. The President's message, less peremptory and warlike in tone as transmitted than in the first draft,* recounted the injuries American commerce had sustained from Great Britain, narrated the story of the recent outrage, and defended the course of the Executive in refusing the objectionable and unauthorized treaty. But it was not until the middle of December that the true situation abroad was so discerned that our Executive could propound a policy. Canning's unofficial disavowal and the Rose mission took the first sting out of the Chesapeake affair, and the casus belli was remitted for the present. But new complications were suddenly disclosed. Our national vessel, the Revenge, reached New York, bringing dispatches not only from Monroe but Armstrong, and Dec. 11-12. announcing the Horizon's condemnation under the Berlin Decree as expounded by Regnier. A merchant ship direct from Liverpool arrived immediately after with London papers of November 12th, which published the substance of the British Orders in Council, adopted the day before. With this testimony before him, besides the proclamation upholding the right of search, and recalling British seamen, of which we have spoken, and earlier particulars of the outrage upon the Danish fleet,-all of this, whether official or unofficial, of instant concern to a neutral power, the Executive framed a policy for the crisis, and sent a confidential message Dec. 16. to Congress announcing it.

Embargo was the President's recommendation, or an inhibition of the departure of our vessels from the ports of the United States. This policy, which might appear literally to

* Gallatin had persuaded the President to tone down the expressions of this document, as first prepared, so as to conform it better to the existing, undecided state of affairs. He favored war preparations, but meantime a perseverance of caution in language and action. Adams's Gallatin, 363.

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