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 trade which heard the intelligence kept out of their ports, preferring to run the risk of capture rather than lose their share of the enormous profits they were making in their neutral bottoms, by a clandestine trade with France and England. The American government clearly foresaw that the extreme measures adopted by both belligerents would annihilate their foreign carrying trade, and restore to England that power and its accompanying commercial advantages, which her maritime superiority had already conferred on her in the great contest in which she was engaged.

One of the objects of Napoleon by his decrees was evidently to prey upon the known susceptibility of the Americans, and to urge them, on the pretence of the independence of their flag, to resist the executive authority exercised by England, whether with regard to the right of neutrals, the right of search, or the impressment of American seamen, all fruitful sources of complaint on the part of the American government. Nor had he, indeed, unwilling listeners, for the Americans, in their diplomatic proceedings, exhibited an unequivocal tendency to favour Napoleon. Although statements were made in Parliament that the Americans would have joined England in the war against France if she would have consented to rescind the Orders in Council as regarded their shipping, all these allegations were unfortunately at variance with the truth, and were, in fact, only put forward by interested English merchants who could no longer avail themselves of American bottoms to carry on their trade. Finding their embargo inoperative, as American