ports and those of their
colonies open to her trade.

This of itself was a severe blow to the embargo, which for coercive
success depended upon the co-operation of the Continental system. It
was further thwarted and weakened by extensive popular repudiation in
the United States. The political conviction of the expediency, or
probable efficacy, of the measure was largely sectional; and it is no
serious imputation upon the honesty of its supporters to say that
they mustered most strongly where interests were least immediately
affected. Tobacco and cotton suffered less in keeping than flour and
salt fish; and the deterioration of these was by no means so instant
as the stoppage of a ship's sailing or loading. The farmer ideal is
realizable on a farm; but it was not so for the men whose sole
occupation was transporting that which the agriculturist did not need
to markets now closed by law. Wherever employment depended upon
commerce, distress was immediate. The seamen, improvident by habit,
first felt the blow. "I cannot conceive," said Representative
[afterwards Justice] Story, "why gentlemen should wish to paralyze the
strength of the nation by keeping back our naval force, and
particularly now, when many of our native seamen (and I am sorry to
say from my own knowledge I speak it) are starving in our ports."[233]
The Commandant of the New York Navy Yard undertook to employ, for
rations only, not wages, three hundred of those adrift in the streets;
the corporation of the city undertaking to pay for the food
issued.[234] They moved off, as they could get opportunity, towards
the British Provinces; and thus many got into the British service, by
enlistment or impressment. "Had your frigate arrived here instead of
the Chesapeake," wrote the British Consul General at New York, as
early as February 15, 1808, "I have no doubt two or three hundred able
British seamen would have entered on board her for his Majesty's
service; and even now, was your station removed to this city, I feel
confident, _provided the embargo continues_, you would more than
complete your complement."[235] Six months later, "Is it not notorious
that not a seaport in the United States can produce seamen enough to
man three merchant ships?"[236] In moving the estimates for one
hundred and thirty thousand seamen a year later (February, 1809), the
Secretary of the Admiralty observed that Parliament would learn with
satisfaction that the number of seamen now ser