ich it was a dangerous rival
in maintaining the commercial intercourse of Europe; while her
population and purchasing power were so increased as to constitute her
a very valuable market, manufacturing for which was chiefly in the
hands of Great Britain. It became, therefore, an object with Napoleon,
in prosecution of the design of the Berlin Decree, to draw the United
States into co-operation with the European continental system, by
shutting her ports to Great Britain; while the latter, confronted by
this double danger, sought to impose upon neutral navigation--almost
wholly American--such curtailment as should punish the Emperor and his
tributaries for their measures of exclusion, and also neutralize the
effect of these by forcing the British Islands into the chain of
communication by which Europe in general was supplied. To retaliate
the Berlin Decree upon the enemy, and by the same means to nourish the
trade of Great Britain, was the avowed twofold object. The shipping of
the United States found itself between hammer and anvil, crushed by
these opposing policies. Napoleon banned it from continental harbors,
if coming from England or freighted with English goods; Great Britain
forbade it going to a continental port, unless it had first touched at
one of hers; and both inflicted penalties of confiscation, when able
to lay hands on a vessel which had violated their respective commands.

The lack of precision in the terms of the Berlin Decree exposed it
from the first to much latitude of interpretation; and the Emperor
remaining absent from France for eight months after its promulgation,
preoccupied with an arduous warfare in Eastern Europe, the
construction of the edict by the authorities in Paris made little
alteration in existing conditions. Nevertheless, the impulse to
retaliate prevailed; and the British ministry with which Monroe and
Pinkney had negotiated, though comparatively liberal in political
complexion, would not wait for more precise knowledge. The occasion
was seized with a precipitancy which lent color to Napoleon's
assertion, that the leading aim was to favor their own trade by
depressing that of others. This had already been acknowledged as the
motive for interrupting American traffic in West India produce. Now
again, one week only after stating to Monroe and Pinkney that they
"could not believe that the enemy will ever seriously attempt to
enforce such a system," and without waiting to ascertain whethe