. Monroe found
the British willing to make only an agreement like the Jay treaty which,
while containing special provisions to render the situation tolerable,
should refuse to yield any British contentions. That was the Whig policy
as much in 1806 as it had been in 1766. The concessions were slight; and
the chief one, regarding the re-exportation of French West Indian
produce, permitted it only on condition that the goods were bona fide of
American ownership, and had paid in the United States a duty of at least
two per cent. Jefferson {197} did not even submit the treaty to the
Senate.

After this failure, the situation grew graver. Napoleon, in December,
1806, issued from Berlin a decree declaring that, in retaliation for the
aggressions of England upon neutral commerce, the British Isles were in
blockade and all trade with them was forbidden. British goods were to be
absolutely excluded from the continent. The reply of the Grenville
Ministry to this was an Order in Council, January, 1807, prohibiting
neutral vessels from trading between the ports of France or her allies;
but this was denounced as utterly weak by Perceval and Canning in
opposition. In April, 1807, the Grenville Ministry, turned out of office
by the half insane George III, was replaced by a thoroughly Tory cabinet,
under the Duke of Portland, whose chief members in the Commons were
George Canning and Spencer Perceval, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of
the Exchequer respectively. The United States was now to undergo
treatment of a new kind at the hands of Tories who despised its
institutions, felt only contempt for the courage of its government, and
were guided as regards American commerce by the doctrines of Lord
Sheffield and James Stephen.

An Order in Council of November 11, {198} 1807, drafted by Perceval and
endorsed by all the rest of the Cabinet, declared that no commerce with
France or her allies was henceforward to be permitted unless it had
passed through English ports. To this Napoleon retorted by the Milan
Decree of December, 1807, proclaiming that all vessels which had been
searched by British, or which came by way of England, were good prize.
Henceforth, then, neutral commerce was positively prohibited. The
merchantmen of the United States could continue to trade at all only by
definitely siding with one power or the other. The object of the British
order was declared to be retaliation on Napoleon. Its actual effect was
to