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were ready to make great sacrifices for France. And why ready? Because she was fighting the battles of the human race against the combined enemies of liberty, because she was performing the part which Great Britain now, in fact, sustains, forming the only bulwark against universal dominion. *** Then England was combined in what has proved a feeble, inefficient coalition, but which gave just cause for alarm to every friend of human freedom. Now the liberties of the human race are threatened by a single power. More formidable than the coalesced world, to whose utmost ambition, vast as it is, the naval power of Great Britain forms the only obstacle."

He declared that the aggressions of Spain were to all intents and purposes the acts of France. "But, sir, why do I talk of Spain? There are no longer Pyrenees. There exists no such nation, no such being exists as a Spanish king or minister. * * * You know that you have no difference with Spain; that she is the passive tool of a superior power, to whom at this moment you are crouching. Are your differences indeed with Spain? And where are you going to send your political panacea, resolutions and handbills excepted, your sole arcanum of government, your king and cure all? To Madrid? No, you are not such quacks as not to know where the shoe pinches to Paris. You know at least where the disease lies and there you apply the remedy."

With bitter scorn he taunted the administration

with the secrecy in which they felt obliged to veil their Spanish policy. "When the nation anxiously demands the result of your deliberatious, you hang your head and blush to tell. You are afraid to tell. Your mouth is hermetically sealed. Your honor has received a wound which must not take air. Gentlemen dare not come forward and show their work, much less defend it in the presence of the nation."

He would treat with Great Britain. "With her you have not tried negotiation and failed, totally failed, as you have with Spain, or rather, France; and, wherefore, under such circumstances this hostile spirit to the one, and this-I will not say what― to the other?"

He exposed the real nature of the wretched Spanish business in spite of the fact that the injunction of secrecy still rested upon it. "I will not propitiate any foreign nation with money. * ** I will send her (Great Britain) money on no pretext whatever, much less on pretense of buying Labrador, or Botany Bay, when my real object was to secure limits, which she formerly acknowledged at the peace of 1783."

But his opposition was unavailing. Spain "pirated upon our commerce," invaded our territory, captured our citizens, and we did nothing. Napoleon gave us commands, and we obeyed them. The United States wanted West Florida, and that was the only way to get it, without war. England made war upon our commerce,

and we refused to import certain articles of British man-
ufacture after November 1, 1806. Napoleon had scored
one point in his game with Jefferson. He had got the

United States to take a step toward hostilities with Eng-
land. As a measure of retaliation, it was, indeed, ridicu-
lously weak-" a dose of chicken broth to be taken nine
months hence," as John Randolph termed it. But weak
as it was, it was a measure of retaliation.
The same

skill and management, Napoleon might hope, would lead
the United States to employ strong measures in the
course of time.

QUESTIONS.

1. How would you interpret Jefferson's majority in 1804? 2. What commands did Napoleon give to Jefferson, and why did Jefferson obey them?

3. Give the substance of the dispatch which the government received from Armstrong in the latter part of 1805.

4. What influence did it exert upon the policy of the United States toward England and why?

5. What means did Jefferson employ to bring his Spanish policy before Congress?

6. Explain the paragraph quoted from the speech made by Randolph early in 1805.

7. April 12, 1807, Joseph H. Nicholson, a prominent Maryland Republican, wrote a letter to Monroe containing the following passage: "There is a portion who yet retain the feelings of 1798, and whom I denominate the old Republican party.

It is said they have not his (Jefferson's) confidence, and I lament it. You must have perceived from the public prints that the most active members in the House of Representatives are new These are styled exclusively the President's friends." Who were the "Old Republicans?" Account for the fact that they no longer enjoyed the confidence of the President.

men.

**

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8. Enumerate the passages quoted from Randolph's speech which seem to be in a special sense an exposition of the doctrines of "Old Republicanism."

9. What did Randolph mean by "There are no longer Pyrenees?" Also, "Your king and cure all?"

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE BERLIN DECREE AND THE ATTACK ON THE CHESAPEAKE.

F refusing to buy certain articles of British pro

IF

duce was likely to produce any effect on England, there were certainly strong reasons for

the Non-importation Act. The Rule of Impressment 1756 was but one of several out

rages inflicted by England in 1805, any one of which ought to have been intolerable. Since Pitt's return to power (1804), the practice of impressment had been enforced more vigorously than ever. Great Britain assumed that every seaman who could not prove that he was a native born American, was an English subject. In the words of Basil Hall, a young midshipman who served on the British frigate "Leander," in 1805, British officers impressed every American seaman "whom they had reason, or supposed or said they had reason to consider" a British subject, "or whose country they guessed from dialect or appearance." Sometimes they did not leave sailors enough on the American vessel to man her. Sometimes they impressed men whose dialect proved that they were not British born. An American dared not leave port without a certificate of citizenship describing his "eyes and

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