pon England at the expense of the
Americans. The United States, said the French government, is a sovereign
nation. If it does not protect its vessels against unwarrantable British
aggressions it is because the Americans are secretly in league with the
British. France recognizes no difference between its foes. So it is
ordered that any American vessel which submitted to visitation and search
from an English vessel, or paid dues in a British port, ceased to be
neutral, and became subject to capture by the French. The effect of these
orders and decrees was simply that any American ship which fell in with an
English or French man-of-war or privateer, or was forced by stress of
weather to seek shelter in an English or French port, was lost to her
owners. The times were rude, evidence was easy to manufacture, captains
were rapacious, admiralty judges were complaisant, and American commerce
was rich prey. The French West Indies fell an easy spoil to the British,
and at Martinique and Basseterre American merchantmen were caught in the
harbor. Their crews were impressed, their cargoes, not yet discharged,
seized, the vessels themselves wantonly destroyed or libelled as prizes.
Nor were passengers exempt from the rigors of search and plunder. The
records of the State Department and the rude newspapers of the time are
full of the complaints of shipowners, passengers, and shipping merchants.
The robbery was prodigious in its amount, the indignity put upon the
nation unspeakable. And yet the least complaint came from those who
suffered most. The New England seaport towns were filled with idle seamen,
their harbors with pinks, schooners, and brigs, lying lazily at anchor.
The sailors, with the philosophy of men long accustomed to submit
themselves to nature's moods and the vagaries of breezes, cursed British
and French impartially, and joined in the general depression and idleness
of the towns and counties dependent on their activity.

It was about this period (1794) that the American navy was begun; though,
curiously enough, its foundation was not the outcome of either British or
French depredations, but of the piracies of the Algerians. That fierce and
predatory people had for long years held the Mediterranean as a sort of a
private lake into which no nation might send its ships without paying
tribute. With singular cowardice, all the European peoples had acquiesced
in this conception save England alone. The English were feared by th