the rule of 1756
as binding, while indirect trade between neutral ports and the ports
of an enemy was again allowed, but under the new proviso that the
neutral ship did not on her outward voyage furnish the enemy with
goods contraband of war. This privilege of indirect trade was
invaluable to American ship-owners, and for two years the ocean
commerce of all Europe was in their hands. The fortunes they thus
accumulated were enormous, while Great Britain saw her own
manufactures displaced by those of continental nations, and the
colonies of her enemies prospering as never before. In 1805,
therefore, she withdrew the privilege of indirect trade, and her flag
being, after Trafalgar, the only belligerent one left on the ocean,
proceeded both to enforce the new rule and to abuse the proviso
concerning neutral vessels carrying contraband of war by ruthlessly
exercising the right of search. Under the orders in council of
September fifth, 1805, every neutral ship must be examined to see
whether its lading was a cargo of neutral goods, or whether it
contained anything contraband. This could only mean that every
American ship laden with other than American goods was to be seized;
and in May of the following year, by the still more notorious order of
the sixteenth, Great Britain declared that every European harbor from
Brest to the mouth of the Elbe was blockaded. This was a distance of
eight hundred miles, and even she had not ships enough to enforce her
decree. Trafalgar had turned the heads of English statesmen.

This paper blockade was the challenge which called forth the Berlin
Decree from Napoleon. American ships, like those of the French, were
for a time seized, searched, and detained by the British on the
slightest suspicion that they were either leaving or were destined for
a hostile port, while their sailors were pitilessly impressed. The
government at Washington authorized reprisals, but American
ship-owners found it more profitable to compromise than to resist, and
Monroe came to an understanding with the English ministry; the
prosperity of American shipping was again revived, and the merchants
of the United States continued to prosper by carrying English wares
under the American flag into harbors where the union jack was
forbidden. By this evasion Great Britain retained her commercial
supremacy, and her prosperity was rather increased than diminished.
She withheld a similar cooeperation from Sweden and Russia until i