ame
period, it is expedient here to give a summary of European conditions
at the same time, for these markedly affected the policy of the
British Government towards the United States, even after war had been
formally declared.

The British Orders in Council of 1807, modified in 1809 in scope,
though not in principle, had been for a long while the grievance
chiefly insisted upon by the United States. Against them mainly was
directed, by Jefferson and Madison, the system of commercial
restrictions which it was believed would compel their repeal.
Consequently, when the British Government had abolished the obnoxious
Orders, on June 23, 1812, with reservations probably admissible by
the United States, it was unwilling to believe that war could still
not be avoided; nor that, even if begun in ignorance of the repeal, it
could not be stopped without further concession. Till near the end of
the year 1812 its measures were governed by this expectation,
powerfully re-enforced by momentous considerations of European events,
the effect of which upon the United States requires that they be
stated.

In June, 1812, European politics were reaching a crisis, the issue of
which could not then be forecast. War had begun between Napoleon and
Russia; and on June 24 the Emperor, crossing the Niemen, invaded the
dominion of the Czar. Great Britain, already nine years at war with
France, had just succeeded in detaching Russia from her enemy, and
ranging her on her own side. The accession of Sweden to this alliance
conferred complete control of the Baltic, thus releasing a huge
British fleet hitherto maintained there, and opening an important
trade, debarred to Great Britain in great measure for four years past.
But on the other hand, Napoleon still, as during all this recent
period, controlled the Continent from the Pyrenees to the Vistula,
carrying its hosts forward against Russia, and closing its ports to
British commerce to the depressing injury of British finance. A young
Canadian, then in England, in close contact with London business life,
wrote to his home at this period: "There is a general stagnation of
commerce, all entrance to Europe being completely shut up. There was
never a time known to compare with the present, nearly all foreign
traders becoming bankrupt, or reduced to one tenth of their former
trade. Merchants, who once kept ten or fifteen clerks, have now but
two or three; thousands of half-starved discharged clerks are s