n Government. The commerce of America ceased to exist. Her seamen
were driven to seek employment under the British flag; and Britain again
absorbed the carrying-trade of the world. But what he really looked
forward to was something far beyond this. He saw that the embargo was
but a temporary expedient: and he believed that its failure would force
the United States into union with England in her war with France.
Nothing shows the world-wide nature of the struggle more than such a
policy as this; but for a while it seemed justified by its results.
After a year's trial America found it impossible to maintain the
embargo: and at the opening of 1809 she exchanged it for an Act of
Non-Intercourse with France and England alone. But this Act was as
ineffective as the embargo. The American Government was utterly without
means of enforcing it on its land frontier; and it had small means of
enforcing it at sea. Throughout 1809 indeed vessels sailed daily for
British ports. The Act was thus effective against France alone, and part
of Canning's end was gained. At last the very protest which it embodied
was given up, and in May 1810 the Non-Intercourse Act was repealed
altogether. All that America persisted in maintaining was an offer that
if either Power would repeal its edicts, it would prohibit American
commerce with the other.

[Sidenote: Napoleon and Spain.]

What the results of this offer were to be we shall see hereafter. But at
the moment the attitude of America was one of utter submission; and the
effect of the Continental system on Britain had thus been to drive it to
a policy of aggression upon neutral states, which seemed to be as
successful as it was aggressive. The effect of his system on Napoleon
himself was precisely the same. It was to maintain this material union
of Europe against Britain that he was driven to aggression after
aggression in North Germany, and to demands upon Russia which threatened
the league that had been formed at Tilsit. Above all, it was the hope of
more effectually crushing the world-power of Britain that drove him, at
the very moment when Canning was attacking America, to his worst
aggression, the aggression upon Spain. Spain was already his subservient
ally; but her alliance became every hour less useful. The country was
ruined by misgovernment: its treasury was empty: its fleet rotted in
its harbours. To seize the whole Spanish Peninsula, to develope its
resources by an active administratio