With this feeling, Great
Britain, whose very being was maritime, not unnaturally became the
object of a dislike so profound as unconsciously to affect action.
Napoleon decreed, and embargoed, and sequestered, with little effect
upon national sentiment outside of New England. "Certainly all the
difficulties and the troubles of the Government during our time
proceeded from England," wrote Jefferson soon after quitting
office,[227] to Dearborn, his Secretary of War. "At least all others
were trifling in comparison." Yet not to speak of the Berlin Decree,
by which ships were captured for the mere offence of sailing for
England,[228] Bonaparte, by the Bayonne Decree, April 17, 1808, nearly
a year before Jefferson left office, pronounced the confiscation of
all American vessels entering ports under his control, on the ground
that under the existing embargo they could not lawfully have left
their own country; a matter which was none of his business. Within a
year were condemned one hundred and thirty-four ships and cargoes,
worth $10,000,000.[229]

That Jefferson consciously leaned to France from any regard to
Napoleon is incredible; the character and procedures of the French
Emperor were repugnant to his deepest convictions; but that there was
a still stronger bias against the English form of government, and the
pursuit of the sea for which England especially stood, is equally
clear. Opposition to England was to him a kind of mission. His best
wish for her had been that she might be republicanized by a successful
French invasion.[230] "I came into office," he wrote to a political
disciple, "under circumstances calculated to generate peculiar
acrimony. I found all the offices in the possession of a political
sect, who wished to transform it ultimately into the shape of their
darling model, the English government; and in the meantime to
familiarize the public mind to the change, by administering it on
English principles, and in English forms. The elective interposition
of the people had blown all their designs, and they found themselves
and their fortresses of power and profit put in a moment in the hand
of other trustees."[231]

These words, written in the third of the fifteen embargo months,
reveal an acrimony not wholly one-sided. It was perceived by the
parties hardest hit by this essentially Jeffersonian scheme; by the
people of New England and of Great Britain. In the old country it
intensified bitterness. In the follo