Every one could understand that to assert such principles was an impossibility for neutrals, and was so meant by Napoleon. He had no thought of making demands which England could accept. The destruction of her naval power was his favorite object after the year 1805. The battle of Wagram confirmed him in his plan, and Louis’ opposition counted for even less than Armstrong’s diplomacy in checking the energy of his will. As he ordered Louis, so he ordered Madison, to obey; and thanks to the obstinacy of Spencer Perceval, both had no choice but to assist his scheme. As an answer to the American offer expressed in the Non-intercourse Act, Champagny’s despatch of August 22 was final; but to preclude a doubt, it closed by saying that the ports of Holland, of the Elbe and the Weser, of Italy and of Spain, would not be allowed to enjoy privileges of which French ports were deprived, and that whenever England should revoke her blockades and Orders in Council, France would revoke her retaliatory decrees.
Without suicide, England could hardly accept the principles required by this note; nor had she reason to suppose that her acceptance would satisfy Napoleon’s demands. As though to encourage her in obstinacy, the note was printed in the “Moniteur” of October 6, by the Emperor’s order, before it could have reached America. This unusual step served no purpose except to give public notice that France would support England in restricting American rights; it strengthened the hands of Spencer Perceval and took away the last chance of American diplomacy, if a chance still existed. Yet neither this stroke nor the severity foreshadowed by the secret Decree of Vienna was the only punishment inflicted by Napoleon on the United States for the Non-intercourse Act and Erskine’s arrangement.
The principle of the Vienna Decree required confiscation of American commerce in retaliation for penalties imposed on French ships that should knowingly violate the Non-intercourse Act. Although this rule and the Bayonne Decree seemed to cover all ordinary objects of confiscation, the Emperor adopted the supplementary rule that American merchandise was English property in disguise. In the month of November a cotton-spinner near Paris, the head of a very large establishment, petitioned for leave to import about six hundred bales of American cotton. His petition was returned to him with the indorsement: “Rejected, as the cotton belongs to American commerce.” The severity of the refusal surprised every one the more because the alternative was to use Portuguese—that is to say English—cotton, or to encourage the consumption of fabrics made wholly in England, of English materials.[116] Having decided to seize all American merchandise that should arrive in France on private account, and having taken into his own hands the business of selling this property as well as of admitting other merchandise by license, Napoleon protected what became henceforward his personal interests, by shutting the door to competition.[117] Armstrong caught glimpses of this stratagem even before it had taken its finished shape.
“I am privately informed,” wrote Armstrong December 10, “that General Loison has left Paris charged to take hold of all British property, or property suspected of being such in the ports of Bilbao, San Sebastian, Pasages, etc. The latter part of the rule is no doubt expressly intended to reach American property. With the General goes a mercantile man who will be known in the market as his friend and protégé, and who of course will be the exclusive purchaser of the merchandise which shall be seized and sold as British. This is a specimen at once of the violence and corruption which enter into the present system; and of a piece with this is the whole business of licenses, to which, I am sorry to add, our countrymen lend themselves with great facility.”
Under such conditions commerce between the United States and France seemed impossible. One prohibition crowded upon another. First came the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806, which turned away or confiscated every American vessel voluntarily entering a British port after that date. Second, followed the Milan Decree of Nov. 11, 1807, which denationalized and converted into English property every American ship visited by a British cruiser or sent into a British port, or which had paid any tax to the British government. Third, the Bayonne Decree of April 5, 1808, sequestered all American vessels arriving in France subsequent to the embargo, as being presumably British property. Fourth, the American Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, prohibited all commerce with France or her dependencies. Fifth, the British Orders in Council of April 26, 1809, established a blockade of the whole coast of France. Sixth, the secret Decree of Vienna, of August, 1809, enforced in principle, sequestered every American vessel arriving within the Emperor’s military control, in reprisal for the Non-intercourse Act which threatened French ships with confiscation. Yet with all this, and greatly to General Armstrong’s displeasure, American ships in considerable numbers entered the ports of France, and, what was still more incomprehensible, were even allowed to leave them.
CHAPTER VIII.
Under these circumstances President Madison was to meet Congress; but bad as his situation was in foreign affairs, his real troubles lay not abroad but at home. France never counted with him as more than an instrument to act on England. Erskine and Canning, by their united efforts, had so mismanaged English affairs that Madison derived from their mismanagement all the strength he possessed. The mission of Jackson to Washington retrieved a situation that offered no other advantage.
Jackson lost no occasion to give the President popularity. Comprehending at last that his high tone had only helped his opponent to carry out a predetermined course, Jackson lost self-confidence without gaining tact. At first he sustained himself by faith in Canning; but within a short time he heard with alarm the news from England that Canning was no longer in office or in credit. For a few days after the rupture he had a right to hope that the quarrel would not be pressed to a scandal; but November 13, the “National Intelligencer” published an official statement which embarrassed Jackson to the last point of endurance.
“I came prepared to treat with a regular government,” he wrote to his brother,[118] “and have had to do with a mob, and mob leaders. That I did not show an equal facility with Erskine to be duped by them has been my great crime.”
That Jackson should be angry was natural, and if he was abusive, he received an ample equivalent in abuse; but his merits as a diplomatist were supposed to be his courage and his truth, and these he could not afford to compromise. He had neither said nor done more than stood in his express orders. Canning’s instructions charged Madison with fraud: