Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/274

 224 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS decree, threatening to confiscate all ships bound to England, or which should have paid a fine to the British government or submitted to search at the hands of a British commander. All these decrees and orders were in flagrant violation of international law, and for a time they made the ocean a pandemonium of robbery and murder. Their effect upon American commerce was about the same as if both England and France had declared war against the United States. Their natural and proper effect upon the American peo ple would have been seen in an immediate declara tion of war against both England and France, save that our military weakness was then too manifest to make such a course anything but ridiculous. Be tween the animus of the two bullies by whom we were thus tormented there was little to choose ; but in two respects England s capacity for injuring us was the greater. In the first place, she had more ships engaged in this highway robbery than France, and stronger ones; in the second place, owing to the difficulty of distinguishing between Americans and Englishmen, she was able to add the crowning wickedness of kidnapping American seamen. The wrath of the Americans was thus turned more against England than against France; and never perhaps in the revolutionary war had it waxed stronger than in the summer of 1807, when, in full sight of the American coast, the &quot;Leopard&quot; fired