Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/92

82 August 19 he threatened his brother Louis, King of Holland, to send thirty thousand troops into his kingdom if the ports were not shut; August 24 he sent positive orders that his decree of Berlin should be executed in Holland; and in the last days of August news reached London that a general seizure of neutral vessels had taken place at Amsterdam. From that moment no ship could obtain insurance, and trade with the Continent ceased. Soon afterward the American ship "Horizon" was condemned by the French courts under the Berlin Decree, and no one could longer doubt that the favor hitherto extended to American commerce had also ceased.

These dates were important, because upon them hung the popular defence of Perceval's subsequent Orders in Council. No argument in favor of these orders carried so much weight in England as the assertion that America had acquiesced in Napoleon's Berlin Decree. The President had in fact submitted to the announcement of Napoleon's blockade, as he had submitted to Sir William Scott's decisions, Lord Howick's Order in Council, the blockade of New York, and the custom of impressment, without effectual protest; but the Berlin Decree was not enforced against American commerce until about Sept. 1, 1807,