Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/101

1805. which had carried three cargoes of powder to the Haytians, was taken by a British cruiser, sent into Halifax, and there condemned by the British court as good prize for carrying on an unlawful trade.

Early in August, 1805, after Monroe's return to London, and while Jefferson and Madison were discussing the problem of protecting themselves from French designs, the Emperor Napoleon, who had returned from Italy and gone to the camp at Boulogne, received Turreau's despatch, and immediately wrote in his own emphatic style to Talleyrand:—


 * "The despatch from Washington has fixed my attention. I request you to send a note to the American minister accredited to me. You will join to it a copy of the judgment [at Halifax]; and you will declare to him that it is time for this thing to stop (que cela finisse); that it is shameful (indigne) in the Americans to provide supplies for brigands and to take part in a commerce so scandalous; that I "will declare good prize everything which shall enter or leave the ports of St. Domingo; and that I can no longer see with indifference the armaments evidently directed against France which the American government allows to be made in its ports."

In this outburst of temper Napoleon's ideas of law became confused. The American government did not dispute his right to seize American vessels trading with Hayti: the difficulty was that he did not or could not do so, and for this reason he made the