Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/280

260 was a measure strictly in accordance with precedent—indeed, Napoleon himself ordered a like embargo in Dutch and Italian ports—and the alleged capture of two merchantmen at sea before the declaration was a pure invention, yet these were the pleas on which the French decree was grounded. The pretence of the prisoners being liable to militia duty was so hollow that clergymen, manifestly exempt from such duty, obtained no better treatment than laymen. It would be unprofitable to debate who was to blame for the rupture. Miot de Mélito, a member of Napoleon's Council of State, and assuredly devoid of bias in favour of England, throws the chief blame on his master, and speaks of the detention of British subjects as "a violent measure, unusual even in the bitterest wars." He heard Napoleon before the rupture, at a meeting of the Council to settle the new coinage bearing his effigy, wander off into a tirade against everything English—national character, political institutions, even Shakespere and Milton fell under his lash. Napoleon himself, moreover, in conversation with Lord Ebrington at Elba, scarcely affected to defend the detentions. Ebrington urged that the embargo on shipping prior to the declaration of war was sanctioned by precedent, whereupon the Emperor replied—"Yes, you considered it right because it was to your advantage; other nations who lost by