issued at
Milan in December, which declared every vessel, of whatever nation,
coming from or bound to Britain or any British colony, to have forfeited
its character as a neutral, and to be liable to seizure.

[Sidenote: The American Embargo.]

The policy of Napoleon was at any rate a consistent one in these
measures; for his sole aim was to annihilate the industry as well as the
commerce of Britain; and he had little to fear from the indignation of
America. But the aim of Britain was to find outlets for her
manufactures; and of these outlets America was now far the most
important. She took in fact ten millions of our exports every year, not
only for her own consumption, but for the illicit trade which she
managed to carry on with the Continent. To close such an outlet as this
was to play into Napoleon's hands. And yet the first result of Canning's
policy was to close it. In the long strife between France and England,
America had already borne much from both combatants, but above all from
Britain. Not only had the English Government exercised its right of
search, but it asserted a right of seizing English seamen found in
American vessels; and as there were few means of discriminating between
English seamen and American, the sailor of Maine or Massachusetts was
often impressed to serve in the British fleet. Galled however as was
America by outrages such as these, she was hindered from resenting them
by her strong disinclination to war, as well as by the profit which she
drew from the maintenance of her neutral position; and she believed in
the words of Jefferson, that "it will ever be in our power to keep so
even a stand between France and England, as to inspire a wish in neither
to throw us into the scale of his adversary." But the Orders in Council
and the Milan Decree forced her into action, and she at once answered
them by an embargo of trade with Europe.

Such a step was a menace of further action, for it was plain that
America could not long remain in utter isolation, and that if she left
it she must join one combatant or the other. But she had as yet shown no
military power outside her own bounds, either by land or sea; and
England looked with scorn on the threats of a state which possessed
neither army nor fleet. "America," Lord Sidmouth wrote at this time, "is
a bugbear: there is no terror in her threats!" Canning indeed saw in the
embargo only a carrying out of his policy by the very machinery of the
America