CHAPTER I.
Rarely had a great nation approached nearer than England to ruin without showing consciousness of danger. Napoleon’s boast to his Chamber of Commerce, that within ten years he would subject his rival, was not ill-founded. The conquest of Russia, which Napoleon meant to make certain, combined with a war between the United States and Great Britain, coming immediately upon the destruction of private credit and enterprise in 1810, could hardly fail to shake the British empire to its foundation; and perhaps the worst sign of danger was the absence of popular alarm. The intelligence of all England with feelings equally strong, whether mute or vociferous, was united in contempt for the stolid incompetence of the Tory faction beyond anything known in England since the Stuarts; but both Houses of Parliament, as well as the Crown, were conscious of needing no better representatives than Perceval and Eldon, and convulsions that shook the world never stirred the composure of these men. The capital and credit on which England’s power rested were swept away; the poorer classes were thrown out of employment; the price of wheat,[1] which averaged in 1807 seventy-eight shillings per quarter of eight bushels, in 1808 eighty-five shillings, and in 1809 one hundred and six shillings, in 1810 rose to one hundred and twelve shillings, or about three dollars and a half a bushel, and remained at or above this rate until the autumn of 1813; while abroad, the Spanish peninsula was subdued by Napoleon, whose armies occupied every part of Spain and Portugal except Cadiz and Lisbon. Sweden, the last neutral in Europe, elected a French general of Bonaparte’s family as king, and immediately afterward declared war on England; and the United States closed their ports to British commerce, and menaced a declaration of war. The exports of Great Britain fell off one third in the year 1811. The sources of England’s strength showed exhaustion.
Neither these arguments nor even the supreme argument of war shook the steadfast mind of Spencer Perceval. Responsibilities that might have driven him to insanity took the form of religious duties; and with the support of religious or patriotic formulas statesmen could sleep in peace amidst the wreck of nations. After the insanity of King George was admitted, at the beginning of November, 1810, Spencer Perceval became for a time the King of England, but a king without title. The Prince of Wales, the future regent, was obliged to wait for an Act of Parliament authorizing him to assume power. The Prince of Wales had all his life detested the Tory influence that surrounded the throne, and had associated with Whigs and liberals, like Sheridan and Fox. Perceval expected to retire; the prince could not yet take control, and this dead-lock put a stop to serious government. Nothing but business of routine could be undertaken.
If the United States could wait till spring, their friends were likely to be once more in power, or the Tory influence would be so far shaken that the danger of war might pass. For this possible revolution both Madison and Pinkney twelve months before would have waited with confidence and pleasure; but repeated disappointments had convinced them that their patience was useless. Pinkney had asked and received instructions to require a decision or to quit England. When November arrived, the day on which Napoleon’s Decrees stood revoked according to the Duc de Cadore, Pinkney acted in London on his own responsibility, as Madison acted at Washington, and sent to Lord Wellesley a note, dated November 3, asking for an immediate repeal of the British Orders in Council, on the ground that Napoleon’s revocation had taken effect. “That it has taken effect cannot be doubted,” he said;[2] but he offered no evidence to support his assertion. He also assumed that England was bound to withdraw Fox’s blockade of the French coast from Brest to the Elbe, as well as Spencer Perceval’s subsequent measures which were called into existence by Napoleon’s Continental system, and were to cease with it. Both these demands were made without instructions founded on the knowledge of Cadore’s letter.
At that moment Lord Wellesley was full of hope that at last he should remove Spencer Perceval from his path. Every one supposed, and had good ground for believing, that the Prince of Wales would at once form a new Government, with Wellesley and the Whigs for its support. At such a crisis Wellesley could not expect or indeed wish to effect a partial and sudden change of foreign policy. He waited a month before taking official notice of Pinkney’s letter, and when he replied,[3] December 4, said only that “after the most accurate inquiry” he had been unable to obtain any authentic intelligence of the French repeal, and begged the American minister to furnish whatever information he possessed on the subject.
The American minister possessed no information on the subject, but he received, December 11, news of the President’s proclamation founded on the French repeal, and was the more decided to insist on his ground. Finding that conversations produced no effect, Pinkney took his pen once more,—and then began another of the diplomatic duels which had occurred so often in the course of the last six years; but for the first time the American champion with weak arguments and indifferent temper used the kind of logic likely to produce conviction in the end.
Pinkney maintained that the French Decrees were revoked and that Fox’s blockade was illegal. Neither position was beyond attack. The American doctrine of blockade was by no means clear. The British government never attempted to defend its sweeping Orders of 1807 and 1809 on the ground of legality; these were admittedly illegal, and a proper casus belli if America chose to make war on their account. England claimed only that the United States were bound to make war on France for the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806, before making war on England for her retaliatory Orders of 1807. In order to evade this difficulty, France declared that her Decree of November, 1806, was retaliatory on Fox’s blockade of May, 1806. America began by maintaining that as far as concerned neutral commerce both belligerents used retaliation for illegitimate objects, and that the United States might rightfully declare war against either or both. The position was easily understood, and had the advantage of being historically true; but the United States stood on less certain ground when they were drawn into discussion of the legal theory involved in Fox’s blockade.
England held[4] that Fox’s blockade of May, 1806, covering the French coast from the Elbe to Brest, was a lawful blockade, supported by a particular naval force detached for that special purpose and sufficient for its object, until the blockade itself was merged in the avowedly extra-legal paper-blockades of 1809; and that if the paper-blockades were withdrawn, Great Britain had the right to re-establish Fox’s blockade with an efficient naval force to execute it.
President Madison held a different opinion. He insisted,[5] and ordered Pinkney to insist, that a particular port must be invested by a particular naval force; and that Great Britain ought not to contend that her naval force was adequate to blockade a coast a thousand miles long. On this ground the President, July 5, 1810,[6] instructed Pinkney to require the annulment of Fox’s blockade as “palpably at variance with the law of nations.” In order to prove the impartiality of this demand, the President promised to insist that the repeal required from France as its counterpart should “embrace every part of the French Decrees which violate the neutral rights guaranteed to us by the law of nations.”