ort Napoleon as to prosecute her trade
subject to his measures, accepting as legal regulations extorted by
him from other European countries, the trade of Europe would be
transferred from Great Britain to America, and the revenues of France
would expand in every way, while those of Great Britain shrank,--a
result militarily fatal. In this the British Government would not
acquiesce. It chose instead war with the United States, under the
forms of peace.

That the tendency of the course pursued by the United States was to
destroy British commerce, and that this tendency was successfully
counteracted by the means framed by the British Government,--the
Orders in Council,--admits of little doubt. When the American policy
had worked out to its logical conclusion, in open trade with France,
and complete interdict of importation from Great Britain, Joel Barlow,
American Minister to France in 1811-12, and an intimate of Jefferson
and Madison, wrote thus to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs: "In
adopting the late arrangements with France the United States could not
contemplate the deprivation of revenue. They really expected to draw
from this country and from the rest of continental Europe the same
species of manufactures, and to as great an amount as they were
accustomed to do from England. They calculated with the more
confidence on such a result as they saw how intimately it was combined
with the great and essential interests of the Imperial Government.
They perceived that _it would promote in an unexpected degree the
Continental system_, which the Emperor has so much at heart.... The
Emperor now commands nearly all the ports of continental Europe. The
whole interior of the Continent must be supplied with American
products. These must pass through French territory, French commercial
houses, canals, and wagons. They must pay" toll to France in various
ways, "and thus render these territories as tributary to France as if
they were part of her own dominions."[208] But Napoleon replied that
his system, as it stood, had greatly crippled British commerce, and
that if he should admit American shipping freely to the Continent,
trade could not be carried on, because the English under the Orders in
Council would take it all, going or coming.[209]

"The peril of the moment is truly supposed to be great beyond all
former example," wrote Pinkney, now American minister in London, when
communicating to his Government the further Orders