6. Can you mention any classes in England whom the embargo was likely to please?

7. How do you account for the fact that the members of the Republican party were willing to surrender their judgment to Jefferson?

8. What difficulty did the coasting trade present to the embargo?

9. Prove that the embargo was intended as a coercive

measure.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE EFFECT OF THE EMBARGO UPON NAPOLEON, GREAT

B

BRITAIN AND NEW ENGLAND.

EFORE Congress adjourned in the spring of 1808, a

law was passed authorizing the President to suspend the embargo laws in whole or in part, till twenty days beyond the next session of Congress, provided England or France or both had revoked their decrees in so far as they related to the commerce of the United States.

Madison wrote to Armstrong (May 2) urging him to use his "best endeavors" to give to this law "all the effect possible with the French government." Armstrong was to tell Napoleon that if he would recall his decrees, Great Britain would be obliged to restore to France the full benefit of neutral trade, or make "collisions with the United States inevitable."*

Armstrong's efforts resulted in complete failure. 'We have somewhat overrated our means of coercing the two great billigerents," he wrote bluntly

Napoleon's re

bargo.

to Madison (Aug. 30). "The embargo is a ply to the emmeasure calculated above any other to keep us whole and in peace; but beyond this you must not count upon it. Here it is not felt and in England it is

*Annals of Congress, 1808-1809, 1677.

forgotten."* Napoleon not only approved the embargo as a "generous determination of renouncing all commerce, rather than acknowledge the domination of the tyrant of the sea," but in a neighborly (?) way helped the United States to enforce it. He issued from Bayonne (April 17), a decree ordering the seizure of

Bayonne decree.

all American vessels in Spain, Italy, France and the Hanse Towns. When Armstrong remonstrated, Napoleon assured him that his decree was not unfriendly to the United States! Since the passage of the embargo laws, American vessels had no business in foreign ports. Those that pretended to be were either British vessels in disguise, or American vessels that had "denationalized" themselves by paying a duty to England. This friendly act enabled him to rob the United States of more than two hundred and thirty ships for the benefit of the French treasury. The Republicans generally approved of it. Vessels, they said, which had paid a tax to England deserved to be captured. The Federalists, on the other hand, denounced it as an outrage.†

*State Papers, III, 256. Pinkney, on the other hand, advised a continuance of the embargo. State Papers, III, 228.

†Napoleon's explanation at Bayonne, of his decree, to Robert Livingston, and Jefferson's comments upon it are interesting. "We are obliged to embargo your ships," said Napoleon; "they keep up a trade with England; they come to Holland with English goods; England has made them tributary to her. This I will not suffer. Tell the President from me, when you see him in America, that if he can make a treaty with England, preserv

That Napoleon should approve of the embargo was natural. The injuries inflicted by it upon his empire and its dependencies were not to be com

Napoleon's ap

embargo.

pared with those inflicted by his wars and proval of the his "Continental System." The question with him was not whether he suffered from the embargo, but whether England suffered more. When he was trying to conquer England by destroying her commerce, the embargo appeared to him as an ally. Next to war, and the exclusion of all British ships and merchandise from American ports, the United States could have pursued no policy so well calculated to assist him. Jefferson knew this. The dispatches of Armstrong had made him familiar with the plans of Napoleon. But to recommend ing his maritime rights, it will be agreeable to me; but that I will make war upon the universe, should it support her unjust pretensions. I will not abate any part of my system." "The explanation of his principles given you by the French Emperor, in conversation" wrote Jefferson to Livingston, "is correct as far as it goes. He does not wish us to go to war with England, knowing we have no ships to carry on that war. To submit to pay to England the tribute on our commerce, which she demands by her Orders of Council, would be to aid her in the war against him, and would give him just ground to declare war with us. He concludes, therefore, as every rational man must, that the embargo,

the only remaining alternative, was a wise measure. Had the Emperor gone further and said that he condemned our vessels going voluntarily into his ports in breach of his municipal laws, we might have admitted it rigorously legal, though not friendly. But his condemnation of vessels taken on the high seas, by his privateers, and carried voluntarily into his ports, is justifiable by no law, is piracy, and this is the wrong we complain of against him." Writings, v. 370.

the embargo with the knowledge that it tended to promote the plans of Napoleon was one thing; to do it with that end in view was quite another. Jefferson intended to make Napoleon serve his ends; he did not intend to serve the ends of Napoleon. In the game which both of them were playing each was trying to use the other. Napoleon was trying to make Jefferson help him break down what seemed to be the only serious obstacle in his path to the empire of the world. Jefferson hoped that Napoleon's "Continental System" would help him to compel Great Britain to respect the rights of the United States.

About the same time that Madison wrote to Armstrong, he wrote a similar letter to Pinkney, urging him also to give to the law authorizing the suspension of the embargo, "all the effect possible with the British government."

When Pinkney received the letter, the reverses which terminated with the island of St. Helena had begun. The attempt of Napoleon to seat his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain, to make that kingdom a province of France in name as well as in fact, had led to a patriotic and heroic uprising of the Spanish people. The memory of their former greatness animated them to sublime exertions. The ports of Spain and her colonies were thrown open to English commerce, and Napoleon's "Continental System," of which "extent and continuity were vital principles," according to Canning,