MILAN DECREE, ETC.
The British order in council of the 7th of January, prohibiting neutrals from trading to any port in the possession or under the control of the enemy not being efficient, additional orders were issued, on the 11th of November, declaring every port from which England was excluded to be in a state of blockade, and all trade in its produce illegal, and liable therefore to be captured. The Americans were allowed still to trade with the enemy’s colonies for articles of their own consumption; but the double restriction was imposed on their intercourse between France and her colonies, of calling at a British port and paying a British duty. To avoid the losses and hostilities apprehended from the measures of the two great belligerent powers, the British council likewise laid a strict embargo on all American vessels, by which they were prohibited from leaving their ports, while the ships of all other nations were ordered to quit the harbours of the United States, with or without cargoes, so soon as they should receive notification of the act. These directions were responded to by Napoleon, by his celebrated Milan decree, which enacted “that all vessels entering a port of France after having touched England should be seized and confiscated, with their cargoes, without exception or distinction.” This decree was succeeded by another on the 19th of December, which had more explicit reference to our late orders in council, and which declared “that every neutral which submitted to be searched by an English ship, or which paid any duty to the British Government, should, in consequence, become liable to seizure, as a lawful prize, by French ships of war.” Neutral powers, as it has been observed, were thus placed between two fires: if they entered a French port without paying a duty on their cargoes in England, they were subjected to capture by British cruizers; and if they touched at England for that purpose, they became subject to confiscation in the ports of France. The system, however, which Napoleon had adopted towards British commerce, and which gave rise to these perplexities among nations, was the means by which he was hurled from his throne.