“For these Orders in Council,” he said, “so far as he had been connected with their adoption, he was ready to take his full share of responsibility. What orders were truly meant? Why, they were the Orders in Council which, until he had heard the speech of the right honorable gentleman (Mr. Rose), he had always looked upon as retaliatory upon the enemy; which had been so understood in every instance, until the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, in contradiction to every statement which had hitherto been given to the public on the subject,—in contradiction to every document in office respecting these Orders,—in contradiction to every communication which he (Mr. Canning) had made, and every despatch written in his official character explanatory of their nature and spirit,—in contradiction to every speech which had been made in Parliament in defence of them,—had thought proper to represent them not as measures retaliatory upon the enemy, but as measures of self-defence. Self-defence, but not retaliatory!... If they were to be in no larger a sense retaliatory than as self-defensive,—if they were not to retaliate directly against the enemy, but to be defensive against a rival in trade,—if they were not to be belligerent measures, but purely defensive,—then all the arguments by which they had hitherto been supported would fail to apply.”
Again and again Canning returned to this slip of the tongue by which Rose had given him pretext for turning against the Administration.
“If at any time it should appear that these orders did not retort his aggression upon the enemy, but operated solely to the injury of the neutrals; if even the British government should appear to have interfered to relieve their pressure upon the enemy,—they would stand upon far different principles than those upon which he had supported them, and would in his opinion be very proper objects for examination and revision.... Were he called upon to state his opinion of what he conceived the Orders in Council should be, he could not do it more fully than by saying that they were most perfect as they approached toward a belligerent measure and receded from a commercial one. Let them have for their object the pressure and distress of the enemy, for the purpose of compelling him to listen to terms of accommodation, and not for the narrow policy of wringing temporary concessions from him with which they might go to his own market.”
To the amazement of friend and foe Canning next attacked the license system as one of which he had little knowledge, but whose details required investigation. As for America, as he was the last man who would lay the honor of the country at her feet, so would he be among the first to go far in the work of honorable conciliation, and he would not oppose the motion before the House because it might have incidentally the effect of conciliating her. Finally, if the account of Plumer Ward be true, “he concluded the first dull and flat speech I ever heard him make, without the smallest support from the House, and sat down without a cheer and almost without its being known that he had finished.”
Plumer Ward was a passionate admirer of Spencer Perceval, and his anger with Canning showed the soreness caused by Canning’s sudden change of front. Perceval was obliged to rescue Rose, but in doing so made the case worse rather than better as far as regarded America. Having declared that the orders were strictly retaliatory, he added, in the same breath, that “the object of Government was to protect and to force the trade of this country.... The object of the Orders in Council was not to destroy the trade of the Continent, but to force the Continent to trade with us.” Had this assertion been made by Madison or Brougham it would have been instantly contradicted; but Perceval’s silence was still less creditable than his avowals. No one knew so well as Perceval where to strike with effect at Canning; for not only could he show that from the first Canning was privy to the system of forcing commerce upon France, but he had preserved the letter in which Canning at the outset advised him to keep out of sight the exceptions which gave the measure the air of a commercial rather than a political transaction. Never had a distinguished man exposed himself with less caution than Canning, by declaring that in his opinion the orders required revision from the moment the British government should appear to intervene to relax their pressure upon the enemy; for during two years of his official life he had given steady though silent support to the Board of Trade in its persistent efforts to supply France, by means of licenses in thousands and smuggling without limit, with every product known to commerce. Such conduct challenged the severest retort, but Perceval made none. He would have been superior to the statesmen of his time had he felt the true nature of that sleight-of-hand which he and Canning practised, and which, like the trick of blacklegs on the race-course, consisted in shuffling together the two words, “Retaliation—Self-defence! Self-defence—Retaliation!” but he could at least understand the impossibility of exposing Canning without also exposing himself.
The debate ended in a division. One hundred and forty-four members, including Canning and Wilberforce, went into the lobby with Brougham. Only a majority of seventy-two remained to be overcome; and to Brougham’s energetic nature such a majority offered an incentive to exertion. Perceval’s friends, on the other hand, exulted because this majority of seventy-two stood by him against the combined forces of Wellesley, Canning, the Radicals, and the Whigs.[220] Except for one danger, Perceval and his system were still secure; but the fear that the Americans meant at last to fight gave him no rest,—it dogged his steps, and galled him at every motion. Neither Rose nor James Stephen could prove, by any statistics under the control of the Board of Trade, that their system would benefit British commerce if it produced an American war. Already the north and west of England, the inland counties, the seaports, had risen in insurrection against the orders. Stephen and Rose exhausted themselves and the House to prove that the balance of profit was still in England’s favor; but what would become of their balance-sheet if they were obliged to add the cost of an American war to the debtor side of their account?
In the effort to strengthen his Ministry Perceval persuaded Lord Sidmouth to enter the Cabinet, but only on condition that the orders should be left an open question. Sidmouth plainly said that he would rather give up the orders than face an American war.[221] He also asked that the license system should be renounced. Perceval replied that this would be a greater sacrifice than if the licenses had never been granted.[222] Lord Sidmouth was not a great man,—Canning despised his abilities, and the Prince of Wales called him a blockhead;[223] but he was, except Lord Castlereagh, the only ally to be found, and Perceval accepted him on his own terms. The new Cabinet at once took the American question in hand, and Castlereagh then wrote his instructions of April 10 to Foster, making use of Bassano’s report to justify England’s persistence in the orders; but besides this despatch Castlereagh wrote another of the same date, in which Sidmouth’s idea took shape. If the United States would restore intercourse with Great Britain, the British government would issue no more licenses and would resort to rigorous blockades.[224] This great concession showed how rapidly Perceval lost ground; but this was not yet all. April 21 the Prince Regent issued his formal declaration that whenever the French government should publish an authentic Act expressly and unconditionally repealing the Berlin and Milan Decrees, the Orders in Council, including that of Jan. 7, 1807, should be wholly and absolutely revoked.
Had the United States at that moment been so fortunate as to enjoy the services of Pinkney in London, or of any man whose position and abilities raised him above the confusion of party politics, he might have convinced them that war was unnecessary. The mere threat was sufficient. Sidmouth’s entrance into the Cabinet showed the change of current, and once Perceval began to give way, he could not stop. Unfortunately the United States had no longer a minister in England. In July, 1811, the President ordered Jonathan Russell to London to act as chargé until a minister should be appointed, which he added would be done as soon as Congress met;[225] but he changed his mind and appointed no minister, while Jonathan Russell, seeing that Perceval commanded a majority and was determined to maintain his system, reported the situation as hopeless.[226]
Brougham, without taking the precaution of giving Russell the daily information he so much needed, devoted all his energies to pressing the popular movement against the Orders in Council. Petition after petition was hurried to Parliament, and almost every petition caused a new debate. George Rose, who possessed an unhappy bluntness, in conversation with a Birmingham committee said that the two countries were like two men with their heads in buckets of water, whose struggle was which of the two could hold out longest before suffocation. The phrase was seized as a catchword, and helped agitation. April 28 Lord Stanley, in the House, renewed the motion for a committee on the petitions against the orders. Perceval had been asked whether he would consent to the committee, and had refused; but on consulting his followers he found such symptoms of disaffection as obliged him to yield rather than face a defeat. George Rose then announced, greatly against his will, that as a matter of respect to the petitioners he would no longer oppose their request; Castlereagh and Perceval, cautioning the House that nothing need be expected from the investigation, followed Rose; while Stephen, after denouncing as a foul libel the charge that the orders had been invented to extend the commerce of Great Britain, also yielded to the committee “as a negative good, and to prevent misconstruction.”
Stimulated by the threatening news from America, Brougham pressed with his utmost energy the victory he had won. The committee immediately began its examination of witnesses, who appeared from every quarter to prove that the Orders in Council and the subsequent non-importation had ruined large branches of British trade, and had lopped away a market that consumed British products to the value of more than ten million pounds sterling a year. Perceval and Stephen did their best to stem the tide, but were slowly overborne, and seemed soon to struggle only for delay.