s: first, by amicable
arrangements with foreign powers; and, secondly, by counteracting acts
of the legislature. With the design, as we have seen, of distressing
France by cutting off her supplies, two orders in council were issued by
the British government, one in June and the other in November, which
bore heavily upon the commercial prosperity of the United States. By the
first order, British cruisers were instructed to stop all ships laden
with corn, flour, or meal (corn-ships already alluded to), bound to any
French port, and send them to any convenient port, home or continental,
where the cargoes might be purchased in behalf of the British
government. By the second, British ships-of-war and privateers were
required to detain all vessels laden with goods produced in any colony
belonging to France, or with provisions for any such colony, and bring
them to adjudication before British courts of admiralty. These were such
flagrant outrages upon the rights of neutrals, that the United States
government strongly remonstrated against them as unjust in principle and
injurious in their practical effects. It was to these orders in council
and their effects that the president pointed in his annual message, when
urging the necessity of placing the country in a state of defense, and
in a position to assert its just rights.[63]

Mr. Jefferson's report gave rise to a series of resolutions offered, by
Mr. Madison on the third of January, 1794, the leading idea of which was
that of opposing commercial resistance to commercial injury, and to
enforce a perfect equality by retaliating impositions on the assumption
that the commercial system of Great Britain was hostile to that of the
United States. This scheme embodied the idea of a proposition made by
Madison in the first Congress. His resolutions now took wider range,
however, than did his proposition then. It was now proposed to impose
restrictions and additional duties on the manufactures and navigation of
nations which had no commercial treaties with the United States, and a
reduction of duties on the tonnage of vessels belonging to nations with
which such treaties existed.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] Letter to Doctor Walter Jones, January 2, 1814.

[63] In allusion to the annual and special messages of Washington at
this time, the eminent Charles James Fox made the following remarks in
the British parliament on the thirty-first of January, 1794:--

"And here, sir, I can not hel