in the barrier, sugar, coffee, and
British manufactures poured in, and were paid for at triple or
tenfold prices, not in exports, but in coin. Malta, the Channel
Islands, and Heligoland (seized by England from Denmark in 1807)
became centers of smuggling. The beginning of the end came when
the Czar, tired of French dictation and a policy ruinous to his
country, opened his ports, first to colonial products (December,
1810), and a year later to all British wares. Six hundred vessels,
brought under British convoy into the Baltic, docked at Libau,
and caravans of wagons filled the roads leading east and south.

[Footnote 1: In spite of this crisis, British trade showed progressive
increase in each half decade from 1800 to 1815, and did not fall off
again until the five years after the war. The figures (in millions
of pounds sterling) follow: 1801-05, 61 million; 1806-10, 67 million;
1811-15, 74 million; 1816-20, 60 million.--Day, HISTORY OF COMMERCE,
p. 355.]

In June of 1812 Napoleon gathered his "army of twenty nations" for
the fatal Russian campaign. Now that they had served their purpose,
England on June 23 revoked her Orders in Council. The Continental
System had failed.

_The War of 1812_

In the same month, on June 18, the United States declared war on
Great Britain. Up to 1807 her commerce and shipping, in the words
of President Monroe, had "flourished beyond example," as shown by
the single fact that her re-export trade (in West Indies products)
was greater in that year than ever again until 1915.[1] Later they
had suffered from the coercion of both belligerents, and from her
own futile countermeasures of embargo and non-intercourse. Her
final declaration came tardily, if not indeed unwisely as a matter
of practical policy, however abundantly justified by England's
commercial restrictions and her seizure of American as well as
British seamen on American ships. An additional motive, which had
decisive weight with the dominant western faction in Congress,
was the hope of gaining Canada or at least extending the northern
frontier.

[Footnote 1: United States exports rose from a value of 56 million
dollars in 1803 to 108 million in 1807; then fell to 22 million in
1808, and after rising to about 50 million before the war, went
down to 6 million in 1814.--_Ibid._, p 480.]

A subordinate episode in the world conflict, the War of 1812 cannot
be neglected in naval annals. The tiny American navy retrieved
the fai