distinction between the foreign and from the very fact of their consuming colonial trade, as they affect the market manufactures, are growing rich, and for manufactures and the means of will ere long become, if they are not national security. It may safely be already, rivals. The magnitude of a affirmed that, on a due and general commercial nation's trade with such appreciation of this distinction, the states is the measure, not of its strength, existence of the British empire, in fu- but of its weakness. It may at any ture times, will in all probability come moment be curtailed by foreign tariffs, to depend. Experience has now abun- destroyed by foreign hostility, and a dantly proved that, even as a trading helpless multitude of useless mouths and manufacturing state, we are de- left to encumber and paralyse the pendent on our colonies, if not for the blockaded nation. But the case is very largest, for the most growing part of different with colonies which, forming our exports; and that it is in these integral though distant parts of the pathat both the most eventually im-rent state, are actuated by no feeling of portant and enduring market for our jealousy towards its mercantile estabdomestic industry is to be found.* It lishments; which find their surest inis too late to lament the large proportion of our capital and national industry which has been directed to foreign commerce and manufactures, and the huge masses of our population, embracing the most dangerous classes of the community, who have come to depend on these branches of industry for their support. This direction, forced as it may appear, perilous as its consequences have become, has been induced upon the country by causes beyond the reach of human control, and probably forming part of the means employed by Providence for the dispersion of the European race through the world. It is of more consequence to recollect, as these facts demonstrate, the vital difference, in respect to national safety, between the foreign and the colonial trades, and the utter impossibility of any commercial nation long maintaining its independence, if a considerable part of its population depends on the markets they can find in foreign states. All such countries, terest in following the agricultural pursuits for which they are all, in the first instance, destined by nature; which constitute at once the best market for its industry, and the widest vent for its population. Such distant dependencies, forming a vast empire with the ocean for its interior line of communication, and held together by the strong bond of mutual interest, may, if ruled by wisdom and directed by foresight, long bid defiance to the open or covert hostility of foreign powers. Divided by the neglect, or irritated by the selfish legislation, of the parent state; deprived of the strong bond of mutual interest arising from protected industry; cast adrift upon the world, and exposed to the competition of foreign countries,-the empire of which they form a part will speedily fall to pieces; because the ruling power at home, to gratify separate interests in the dominant island, has neglected the mission appointed for it by Providence, and ceased to benefit the human race. * Table showing the population of the undermentioned countries in 1836, the British exports to them, and the proportion per head they consume of such exports: Proportion per head. £0 0 84 009 0 0 10 003 France, Portugal, Spain, United States of America, British North American Colonics, 0 11 008 008 017 1 16 6 6 British West India Islands, British Australian Colonies, -PORTER'S Parl. Tables for 1836, p. 117, 118. CHAPTER XCI. AMERICAN WAR. 1. VARIOUS have been the causes 2. This Liliputian army, such as it assigned by statesmen and historians was, was still farther paralysed by the for the disastrous issue of the first Ame-corruption-that inherent vice of arisrican war. Two may be specified, of tocratic as well as democratic governsuch paramount importance that they ments-which pervaded all its branches. eclipse all the others, and are of them- Commissions in the army, bestowed selves perfectly adequate to explain the almost entirely as a recompense for, phenomenon, without recurring to any or an inducement to secure parliaother. Great Britain was at that period mentary support, were seldom the rein an especial manner, as she is at all ward of the most deserving. Military times in a certain degree, the victim education was unknown. It was no at once of democratic parsimony and unusual thing to see boys in the nuraristocratic corruption. She undertook sery, captains and even majors in the the conquest of colonies possessing then army; and such was the corruption three millions of inhabitants, situated of commissaries and superior officers, three thousand miles from the parent sharing in their gains in the field, that state, with an army which could not the expense of the troops was nearly bring ten thousand combatants into doubled, while their efficiency was rethe field; for the whole military force duced to less than a half. From the of the empire, of every description, did combined operation of these causes, the not amount to twenty thousand men. war, which, by a vigorous and efficient The furious patriots and country party army, worthy of the real strength of were perpetually declaiming against the England, might have been concluded enormous military and naval forces of with ease at latest in the second caman empire which even then embraced paign, was protracted till France and both hemispheres, when in fact these Spain, as may always be expected in were considerably less than what Baden such a case, joined in the contest; and and Würtemberg, or other sixth-rate then England, after a long and costly powers, now maintain, to defend domin- struggle, was obliged in the end to ions of not a hundredth part of the succumb to a formidable coalition. extent, nor possessing a thousandth part of the resources of the British empire at that period.* Supplies for the year 1773 : Dec. 3, 1772. That 20.000 men be employed for the sea-service for the year 1773, including 4354 marines. Dec. 10. That a number of land forces, including 1522 invalids, amounting to 17,070 effective men, commissioned and non-commissioned officers included, be employed for the year 1773. Feb. 13, 1775. That 2000 men be now add. ed to the navy, in prospect of the war with the Plantations in America. 3. Even as it was, more than one opportunity of crushing the forces of the insurgents was lost, by the inca Feb. 15. That an augmentation of 4383 1773, 226; App. to Chron.; and for 1775, men be made to the land forces-Ann. Reg. p. 93, 94. These forces, it is true, were in the course of the war considerably augmented, and in 1776 above 30,000 men were voted by parlia ment; still this was not a third of what Great Britain might with ease have raised; but that only confirms the argument. It is not in the close, but the commencement of a revolution, that vigorous measures are likely to be successful. pacity on the part of the military commanders, or their selfish desire to protract the war, from the enormous profits with which, to them at least, it was attended.* If Great Britain had put her naval and military forces on a proper footing during peace, and been ready, on the first breaking out of hostilities, to act with an energy worthy of her real strength; if she had possessed fifty thousand disposable troops, in 1775, and a hundred thousand in 1792, the American War might have been brought to a victorious termination in 1776, the French contest in 1793: six years of subsequent disastrous warfare in the first case, and twenty of glorious but costly hostilities in the second, would have been avoided; and the national debt, instead of eight hundred, would now have been under two hundred millions sterling. The history of England, for the last hundred and fifty years, has been nothing but a series of disasters in the first years of hostilities, in consequence of the absurd parsimony of the nation having starved down the military and naval establishments to the lowest point during the preceding years of peace-often redeemed, indeed, by glorious successes in the end, when experience had taught the people the necessity of exertion; but never unaccompanied with lasting and burdensome expenses. 4. It was not surprising that the American people, after the glorious termination of the war of independence, should have retained a warm feeling of gratitude towards their allies, the French, and a strong degree of animosity towards their enemies, the English. The enlightened and truly patriotic leaders of this revolution, however, had discernment enough to perceive, that though the passions of the people were in favour of France, their interests were indissolubly wound up with those of England; and they had greatness of mind sufficient to risk their popularity Particularly when the main American army, under Washington, was driven by Lord Howe into Long Island, and might have been made prisoners by a vigorous advance of the British troops, on 29th August 1776.See Ann. Reg. vol. xix. 173. for the good of their country. The whole efforts of Washington and his friends in the government, from the conclusion of the American War in 1783, to the retirement of that great man from public life in 1796, were devoted to tempering the democratic ardour which had broken out with such vehemence in their country after the declaration of their independence, and laying the foundation of a lasting pacific intercourse with Great Britain. Yet, so strongly were the sympathies of the people enlisted on the side of France and revolution, that it required all his immense popularity to counteract, in 1793, the loudly expressed wish of the decided majority of the American citizens to declare war against Great Britain. So vehement was the clamour that, on more than one occasion at that period, it was apparent that the federalist party, to which he belonged, had lost the majority in the Chamber of Representatives; and such was the fury of the journals out of doors, that he was openly accused of aspiring to the monarchy, and of being, "like the traitor Arnold, a spy sold to the English." But Washington, unmoved, pursued steadily his pacific policy. The horrors of the French Revolution cooled the ardour of many of its ardent supporters on the other side of the Atlantic; and one of the last acts of that great man was to carry, by his influence in Congress, which procured its passing there only by the casting vote of the President, a commercial treaty with Great Britain, [ante, Chap. XXI. § 83]+ 5. But various causes contributed, in the course of the contest between England and France, at once to increase the partiality of the Americans to the latter country, and to bring such important interests of its citizens into jeopardy, as could hardly fail to involve them in the dispute. Under the influence of the equal law of succession, landed property was undergoing a continual division, while the increasing See the treaty, 19th November 1794, between Great Britain and America, in MARTENS, v. 641; and Ann. Reg. 1795, State Papers, 294. Fox's declaring the coasts of France and Holland, from Brest to the Elbe inclusive, in a state of blockade; which was immediately followed by Napoleon's famous Berlin and Milan decrees, which retaliated upon the English by declaring the British Islands in a state of blockade, and authorising the seizure and condemnation of any vessel on the high seas bound from any British har energy of the democratic multitude modern warfare, commenced with Mr was gradually destroying the majority of the conservative party in Congress, and augmenting the violence of the popular press in the country. Already it had become painfully evident,-from the conduct of the American government on various occasions after Washington's retirement from public life, but especially in the dispute which occurred with France in 1797,* in consequence of the sanguinary decree of the Direc-bour, and the confiscation of all British tory, and the readiness with which they accommodated all their differences with that power in 1800, and subscribed the treaty of Morfontaine, which recognised Napoleon's new maritime code, and, in particular, stipulated that the flag should cover the merchandise, and that no articles should be deemed contraband of war but arms and warlike stores that their inclinations now ran violently in favour of the French side of the question, and that, right or wrong, for their interest or against it, they might be expected on the first crisis to take part with that power, [ante, Chap. XXXIII. § 14]. And with the usual tendency of mankind to attach themselves to names and not to things, this strong partiality for the French alliance, which originated in the common democratic feelings by which they both were animated, and the Republican institutions which they both had established, continued after France had passed over to the other side. The citizens of the United States clamoured as loudly for a junction of their arms with those of the Great Empire, as they had done for an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the rising Republic. 6. The Berlin and Milan decrees, and British Orders in Council, however, brought the American commerce immediately into collision with both the belligerent states, and rendered it hardly possible that so considerable a maritime power could avoid taking an active part in the strife. It has been already mentioned how that terrible contest, distinguished by a degree of rancour and violence on both sides unparalleled in Ante, Ch. xxv. §§ 130, 131; 18th January, and 29th October 1798: 30th September 1800. goods wherever they could be found.+ To this the English government replied by the not less famous Orders in Council, which, on the preamble of the blockade of the British dominions established by the Berlin decree, declared "all the posts and places of France and her allies, from which, though not at war with his Majesty, the British flag is excluded, shall be subject to the same restrictions, in respect of trade and navigation, as if the same were actually blockaded in the most strict and rigorous manner; and that all trade in articles, the produce or manufacture of the said countries or colonies, shall be deemed unlawful, and all such articles declared good prize." 7. It is difficult to say which of these violent decrees bore hardest upon neutral powers, or was most subversive of Napoleon's own favourite position, that the flag should cover the merchandise. For, on the one hand, the French Emperor declared that all vessels coming from England or its colonies, or having English goods on board, should be instantly seized and confiscated; and on the other, the English government at once declared the whole dominions of France and its allies, comprehending, after the treaty of Tilsit, nearly the whole of Europe, in a state of blockade, and all vessels bound for any of their harbours, or having any of their produce on board, good and lawful prize. Between these opposite and conflicting denunciations, it was hardly possible for a neutral vessel, engaged in the carrying trade of any part of Europe, to avoid confiscation from one or Ante, Chap. L. §§ 6-12, where the subject is fully discussed, and the orders on both sides given. other of the belligerent parties. In such circumstances the Americans, whose adventurous spirit had enabled them to engross, during this long war, nearly the whole carrying trade of the globe, had unquestionably the strongest ground of complaint; but against whom was it properly to be directed?-against the British, who, by Mr Fox's order, declared only the coast from the Elbe to Brest in blockade, and supported that declaration by a fleet of a thousand vessels of war, which had long since swept every hostile flag from the ocean? or the French, who, without a single ship of the line, and only a few frigates at sea, had declared the whole British empire, in every part of the world, in blockade, and all its produce and manufactures, wherever found, lawful prize? If Mr Fox's blockade of the Elbe and the Weser, besides the harbours of the French channel, was an unwarranted stretch, even when supported by the whole navy of England, what was Napoleon's blockade of the whole British empire, enforced only by a few frigates and sloops at sea? If, therefore, the Americans suffered, as suffer they did, in this unparalleled strife, the party which was to blame was that which first commenced this extraordinary system of declaring blockades to extend beyond the places actually invested by sea or land; and of that unheard of extension Napoleon was unquestionably the author. If the Americans had been really animated by a desire in good faith to vindicate the rights of neutrals, and restrain the oppression of belligerents, what they should have done was to have joined their arms to those of Great Britain, in order to compel the return of the French Emperor to a more civilised method of warfare. 8. But these were very far from being the views which animated the ruling party now in possession of power in the United States. Mr Jefferson was now president, and he was the organ of the democratic majority, which, forgetting the wise maxims of Washington and the authors of American independence, without being inclined to sub VOL XIL mit, if it could possibly be avoided, to actual injustice or loss of profit from either of the belligerent powers, desired if possible to accommodate their differences with France, and wreak their spite on aristocracy, by uniting with that country against Great Britain. This disposition soon appeared in two decisive proceedings. The British government, in December 1806, had concluded and ratified a treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation, with the American plenipotentiary in London; but Mr Jefferson refused to ratify it on the part of the States, and it fell to the ground. Not long after, propositions were submitted by the American government to Napoleon on the subject of the Floridas, which they were desirous of acquiring from the Spaniards, and regarding which they wished a guarantee from the Emperor, that, in the event of their being attacked by the English, he would use his influence with the Spaniards to obtain their cession. This Napoleon, in the first instance, positively refused, as he had an eye to those possessions for Joseph, as an appanage to the crown of Spain; and afterwards an ambiguous answer was returned: but this repulse had no effect in weakening Mr Jefferson's partiality for a French alliance. 9. Meanwhile the American government took the most decisive measures for withdrawing their merchant vessels from aggression on the part of either of the belligerent powers. In the first instance, an angry message was communicated to Congress by Mr Jefferson, inveighing bitterly against the British Orders in Council of January 1807, but not breathing the slightest complaint against Napoleon's Berlin decree of November 1806, to which they were merely a reply. On receipt of intelligence of the more extended British Orders of 11th November 1807, he laid a general embargo on all vessels whatever in the American harbours. And this was followed, on 1st March 1808, by the substitution of a Nonintercourse Act for the embargo, whereby all commercial transactions with either of the belligerent powers G |