a certain big-heartedness, had seized the opportunity
of the "Chesapeake" affair; if they had disclaimed the act of their
officers with frankness and cordiality, offering ungrudging regret,
and reparation proportionate to the shame inflicted upon a community
too weak in military power to avenge its wrongs. As it was, at a
moment when the hostilities she had provoked would have been most
embarrassing, Great Britain escaped only by the unreadiness of the
American Government.

Left unatoned, the attack on the "Chesapeake" remained in American
consciousness where Jefferson and Madison had sought to place it,--an
example of the outrages of impressment. The incidental violence, which
aroused attention and wrath, differed in nothing but circumstance from
the procedure when an unresisting merchant vessel was deprived of men.
In both cases there was the forcible exaction of a disputed claim.
Canning, indeed, was at pains to explain that originally the British
right extended to vessels of every kind; but "for nearly a century the
Crown had forborne to instruct the commanders of its ships of war to
search foreign ships of war for deserters, ... because to attack a
national ship of war is an act of hostility. The very essence of the
charge against Admiral Berkeley, as you represent it, is the having
taken upon himself to commit an act of hostility without the previous
authority of his Government." Under this construction, the incident
only served to emphasize the fundamental opposition of principle, and
to exasperate the war party in the United States. To deprive a foreign
merchant vessel of men was not considered a hostile act; and the
difference in the case of ships of war was only because the Crown
chose so to construe. The argument was, that to retain seamen of
British birth, when recalled by proclamation, was itself hostile,
because every such seaman disobeying this call was a deserter. It was
to be presumed that a foreign Power would not countenance their
detention, and on this presumption no search of its commissioned ships
was ordered. "But with respect to merchant vessels there is no such
presumption."[202]

While the "Chesapeake" affair was still in its earlier stages of
discussion, the passage of events in Europe was leading rapidly to the
formulation of the extreme British measures of retaliation for the
Berlin Decree. On June 14 Napoleon defeated the Russians at the battle
of Friedland; and on June 22, the day the "L