Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/415

 *

only to be broken; and from the experience of the past, and the wholesale destruction of the private property alike of neutrals and belligerents during periods of hostility, we may learn that it is unsafe to rely, in similar cases, on the validity and security of any paper pledges without the general guarantee of nations. Although France, as well as England, had entered into treaties of amity with the United States, which were in force between 1803 and 1809 inclusive, no less than thirteen hundred and three American merchant vessels were captured between those dates by the cruisers of both nations.

Although nominally captured under the operations of the French Decrees and English Orders in Council, many of these captures were made in direct violation of existing treaties, and not a few in obedience simply to the will of the Emperor on the one hand, and that of the English Council on the other. Of the five hundred and thirteen American merchantmen taken by the French, and the forty-seven by the Neapolitans, antecedent to the Berlin and Milan Decrees, one hundred and seventy-four were condemned and burnt, four were compromised, and twenty-one acquitted; while two hundred and nine captured during the operation of these decrees were condemned and burnt, thirty-three released or compromised, and eighty-eight altogether acquitted. Of the vessels captured by the Neapolitans, forty-one were confiscated or condemned, two restored, and four not accounted for. In the category of the vessels burnt at sea no fewer than thirty-seven were destroyed in order to keep secret the movements of the French squadron; and a large number because they had