The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Vol II

Through this cloud of friends and foes the unprotected merchantman had to run the gantlet, trusting to his heels. If he were taken, all indeed was not lost, for there remained the chance of recapture by a friendly cruiser; but in that case the salvage made a large deduction from the profits of the voyage. The dangers thus run were not, however, solely at the risk of the owner; for, not to speak of the embarrassment caused to others by the failure of one merchant, the crews of the ships, the sailors, constituted a great potential element of the combatant force of the nation. A good seaman, especially in those days of simple weapons, was more than half ready to become at once a fighting man. In this he differed from an untrained landsman, and the customs of war therefore kept him, whenever taken afloat, a prisoner till exchanged. Every merchant ship captured thus diminished the fighting power of Great Britain, and the losses were so numerous that an act, known as the Convoy Act, was passed in 1798, compelling the taking of convoy and the payment of a certain sum for the protection. In the first year of its imposition this tax brought in £1,292,000 to the Treasury, while resulting in a yet greater saving of insurance to owners; and the diminished number of prizes taken by the French was thought to be a serious inconvenience to them, at a time when, by the admission of the Directory, foreign commerce under their own flag was annihilated. This remarkable confession, and the experience which dictated the Convoy Act, may together be taken as an indication that, in the defence and attack of commerce, as in other operations of war, concentration of effort will as a rule be found a sounder policy than dissemination. In 1795 the French formally abandoned the policy of keeping great fleets together, as they had before done in their history, and took to the guerre de course. Within three years, ending in December, 1798, "privateers alone put more than twenty thousand individuals in the balance of exchanges favorable to England," and "not a single merchant vessel sailed under the French flag." [249 - Message of Directory to Council of Five Hundred, Jan., 1799; Moniteur, An 7, p. 482.] "The fate of almost all mere cruisers (bâtimens armés en course) is to fall, a little sooner or later, into the hands of the enemy," and in consequence, "out of a maritime conscription of eighty thousand seamen, to-day but half remain" with which to man the fleet. British contemporary authority gives 743 as the number of privateers taken from France alone, between the outbreak of war in 1793 and the 31st of December, 1800,—not to speak of 273 ships of war of the cruiser classes. [250 - McArthur, Financial and Political Facts of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1801, p. 308. Norman (Corsairs of France, London, 1887, App.) gives the number of French privateers taken in the same period as 556.] The absolute loss inflicted by the efforts of these vessels and their more fortunate comrades cannot be given with precision; but as the result of an inquiry, the details of which will be presented further on, the author is convinced that it did not exceed two and a half per cent, and probably fell below two per cent of the total volume of British trade. This loss may be looked upon as a war tax, onerous indeed, but by no means insupportable; and which it would be folly to think could, by itself alone, exercise any decisive influence upon the policy of a wealthy and resolute nation. Yet no country is so favorably situated as France then was for operations against British commerce, whether in the home waters or in the West Indies, at that time the source of at least a fourth part of the trade of the Empire.

The indecisiveness of the results obtained by the French in their war against British shipping was not due to want of effort on their part. On the contrary, the activity displayed by their corsairs, though somewhat intermittent, was at times phenomenal; and this fact, as well as the extraordinarily favorable position of France, must be kept in view in estimating the probable advantages to be obtained from this mode of warfare. At the period in question London carried on more than half the commerce of Great Britain; in addition to its foreign trade it was the great distributing centre of a domestic traffic, carried on principally by the coasters which clustered by hundreds in the Thames. The annual trade of export and import to the metropolis was over £60,000,000, and the entries and departures of vessels averaged between thirteen and fourteen thousand. Of this great going and coming of ships and wealth, nearly two thirds had to pass through the English Channel, nowhere more than eighty miles wide and narrowing to twenty at the Straits of Dover; while the remaining third, comprising the trade from Holland, Germany, and the Baltic, as well as the coasting trade to North Britain, was easily accessible from the ports of Boulogne, Dunkirk, and Calais, and was still further exposed after the French, in 1794 and 1795, obtained complete control of Belgium and Holland. From St. Malo to the Texel, a distance of over three hundred miles, the whole coast became a nest of privateers of all kinds and sizes,—from row-boats armed only with musketry and manned by a dozen men, or even less, up to vessels carrying from ten to twenty guns and having crews of one hundred and fifty. In the principal Channel ports of France alone, independent of Belgium and Holland, there were at one time in the winter of 1800 eighty-seven privateers, mounting from fourteen to twenty-eight guns, besides numerous row-boats. These were actually employed in commerce-destroying, and the fishing-boats of the coast were capable upon short notice of being fitted for that service, in which they often engaged.

The nearness of the prey, the character of the seas, and the ease of making shelter either on the French or English shore in case of bad weather, modified very greatly the necessity for size and perfect sea-worthiness in the vessels thus used; and also, from the shortness of the run necessary to reach the cruising ground, each one placed on this line of coast was easily equal to ten starting for the same object from a more remote base of operations. Privateers sailing at sundown with a fair wind from St. Malo, or Dieppe, or Dunkirk to cruise in the Channel, would reach their cruising ground before morning of the long winter nights of that latitude. The length of stay would be determined by their good fortune in making prizes, if unmolested by a British cruiser. They ventured over close to the English side; they were seen at times from the shore seizing their prizes. [251 - Sir J. Barrow, then a Secretary to the Admiralty, mentions in a letter to J. W. Croker, July 18, 1810, that two colliers had been captured in sight of Ramsgate, close under the North Foreland; and on July 27 an ordnance hoy taken close under Galloper Light, in the face of the whole squadron in the Downs, not one of which moved. (Croker's Diary, vol. i. p. 33)] At Dover, in the latter part of 1810, "signals were out almost every day, on account of enemy's privateers appearing in sight." [252 - Naval Chronicle, vol. xxiv. p. 327. For further curious particulars concerning French privateering in the narrow seas, see Nav. Chron., vol. xxii. p. 279; vol. xxiv. pp. 327, 448, 460-462, 490; vol. xxv. pp. 32-34, 44, 203, 293; vol. xxvii. pp. 102, 237.] Innocent-looking fishing-boats, showing only their half-dozen men busy at their work, lay at anchor upon, or within, the lines joining headland to headland of the enemy's coast, watching the character and appearance of passing vessels. When night or other favorable opportunity offered, they pulled quickly alongside the unsuspecting merchantman, which, under-manned and unwatchful, from the scarcity of seamen, was often first awakened to the danger by a volley of musketry, followed by the clambering of the enemy to the decks. The crews, few in number, poor in quality, and not paid for fighting, offered usually but slight resistance to the overpowering assault. Boarding was the corsair's game, because he carried many men.

It seems extraordinary that even the comparative impunity enjoyed by the privateers—for that it was only comparative is shown by the fact that an average of fifty were yearly captured—should have been attained in the face of the immense navy of Great Britain, and the large number of cruisers assigned to the protection of the coasts and the Channel. There were, however, many reasons for it. The privateering spirit is essentially that of the gambler and the lottery, and at no time was that spirit more widely diffused in France than in the period before us. The odds are not only great, but they are not easy to calculate. The element of chance enters very unduly, and when, as in the present case, the gain may be very great, while the immediate risk to the owner, who does not accompany his ship, is comparatively small, the disposition to push venture after venture becomes irresistible. The seaman, who risks his liberty, is readily tempted by high wages and the same hope of sudden profits that moves the owner; and this was more especially true at a time when the laying up of the fleets, and the disappearance of the merchant shipping, threw seafaring men wholly upon the coasting trade or privateering. The number of ships and men so engaged is thus accounted for; but among them and among the owners there was a certain proportion who pursued the occupation with a thoughtfulness and method which would distinguish a more regular business, and which, while diminishing the risk of this, very much increased the returns. Vessels were selected, or built, with special reference to speed and handiness; captains were chosen in whom seamanlike qualities were joined to particular knowledge of the British coast and the routes of British trade; the conditions of wind and weather were studied; the long winter nights were preferred because of the cover they afforded; they knew and reckoned upon the habits of the enemy's ships-of-war; account was kept of the times of sailing and arrival of the large convoys. [253 - See, for example, the account of the privateer captain, Jean Blackeman Nav. Chron., vol. xii. p. 454.] On the British side, a considerable deduction must be made from the efficiency indicated by the mere number of the coast cruisers. Many of them were poor sailers, quite unable to overtake the better and more dangerous class of privateers. The inducements to exertion were not great; for the privateer meant little money at best, and the abuses that gathered round the proceedings of the Admiralty Courts often swallowed up that little in costs. The command of the small vessels thus employed fell largely into the hands of men who had dropped hopelessly out of the race of life, while their more fortunate competitors were scattered on distant seas, and in better ships. To such, the slight chance of a bootless prize was but a poor inducement to exposure and activity, on the blustering nights and in the dangerous spots where the nimble privateer, looking for rich plunder, was wont to be found. It was worth more money to recapture a British merchantman than to take a French cruiser.

Privateering from the Atlantic, or Biscay, coast of France was necessarily carried on in vessels of a very different class from those which frequented the Channel. There was no inducement for the merchant ships of Great Britain to pass within the line from Ushant to Cape Finisterre; while, on the other hand, her ships-of-war abounded there, for the double purpose of watching the French fleets in the ports, and intercepting both the enemy's cruisers and their prizes, as they attempted to enter. For these reasons, privateers leaving Bordeaux, Bayonne, or Nantes, needed to be large and seaworthy, provisioned and equipped for distant voyages and for a long stay at sea. Their greatest danger was met near their home ports, either going or returning; and their hopes were set, not upon the small and often unprofitable coaster, but upon the richly laden trader from the East or West Indies or the Mediterranean. Out, therefore, beyond the line of the enemy's blockade, upon the deep sea and on one of the great commercial highways converging toward the Channel, was their post; there to remain as long as possible, and not lightly to encounter again the perils of the Bay of Biscay. Moreover, being larger and more valuable, the owner had to think upon their defence; they could not, like the cheap Channel gropers, be thrown away in case of any hostile meeting. While they could not cope with the big frigates of the enemy, there were still his smaller cruisers, and the hosts of his privateers, that might be met; and many a stout battle was fought by those French corsairs. One of these, the "Bordelais," taken in 1799, was said then to be the largest of her kind sailing out of France. She had the keel of a 38-gun frigate, carried twenty-four 12-pounder guns, and a crew of two hundred and twenty men. In four years this ship had captured one hundred and sixty prizes, and was said to have cleared to her owners in Bordeaux a million sterling. [254 - Naval Chronicle, vol. ii. p. 535; vol. iii. p. 151.]

A third most important and lucrative field for the enterprise of French privateers was found in the West Indies. The islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique served as excellent bases of operations. The latter indeed was for many years in British possession, but the former remained, practically without interruption, in the hands of France until its capture in 1810. During the many years of close alliance, from 1796 to 1808, between France and Spain, the West Indian ports of the latter served not only to maintain her own privateers, but to give a wide extension to the efforts of her more active partner. The geographical and climatic conditions of this region tended also to modify the character both of the cruisers and of their methods. Along with a very large European trade, carried on by ships of an average burden of two hundred and fifty tons, there was also a considerable traffic from island to island by much smaller vessels. This local trade was not only between the possessions of the same nation or of friendly States, but existed also, by means of neutrals or contraband, between those of powers at war; and through these and her system of free ports, together with liberal modifications of her commercial code wherever an advantage could thereby be gained, Great Britain succeeded in drawing into her own currents, in war as well as in peace, the course of much of the export and import of the whole Caribbean Sea and Spanish Main. From these two kinds of trade—combined with the general good weather prevailing, with the contiguity of the islands to each other, and with the numerous ports and inlets scattered throughout their extent—there arose two kinds of privateering enterprise. The one, carried on mainly by large and fast-sailing schooners or brigs, was found generally suitable for undertakings directed against ships bound to or from Europe; while for the other the various islands abounded with small row-boats or other petty craft, each with its group of plunderers, which lay in wait and usually in profound concealment to issue out upon the passing trader. [255 - In 1806, on the Jamaica station alone, were captured by the British forty-eight public or private armed vessels, two of which were frigates, the rest small. (Nav. Chron., vol. xvii. pp. 255, 337.)] The uncertain character of the wind in some parts of the day particularly favored an attack, by two or three heavily manned rowing boats, upon a vessel large enough to take them all on board bodily, but fettered by calm and with a small crew. On one occasion a United States sloop-of-war, lying thus motionless with her ports closed, was taken for a merchantman and assailed by several of these marauders, who then paid dearly for the mistake into which they had been led by her seemingly unarmed and helpless condition.

The remoteness of this region from Europe covered very great irregularities, both by the privateers and in the courts. This evil became greater in the French and Spanish islands, when, by the progress of the war, the Sea Power of Great Britain more and more broke off correspondence between them and the mother countries; and when Napoleon's aggression drove the Spaniards into revolution and anarchy, the control of Spain, always inert, became merely nominal. These circumstances, coinciding with the presence of a very large neutral shipping, mainly belonging to the United States, whose geographical nearness made her one of the chief sources of supplies to these colonies, caused the privateering of the Latin and mixed races to degenerate rapidly into piracy, towards which that mode of warfare naturally tends. As early as 1805, an American insurance company complained to the Secretary of State that "property plundered by real or pretended French privateers was uniformly taken into the ports of Cuba, and there, with the connivance of the Spanish government, was sold and distributed, without any form of trial, or pretence for legal condemnation."[1] And the United States consul at Santiago de Cuba reported officially that more than a thousand American seamen had been landed in that port, most of them without clothes or any means of support; and that "the scene of robbery, destruction, evasion, perjury, cruelty, and insult, to which the Americans captured by French pirates, and brought into this and adjacent ports, have been subjected, has perhaps not been equalled in a century past." [256 - American State Papers, vol. ii. pp. 670, 771.] This lawlessness ended, as is generally known, in an actual prevalence of piracy on an extensive scale, about the south side of Cuba and other unfrequented parts of the archipelago, for some years after the war. From the character of the ground and the slow communications of the day, these desperadoes were finally put down only by the systematic and long continued efforts of the various governments concerned.

The Eastern trade of Great Britain was in the hands of the East India Company; and its ships, which carried on the intercourse between India and Europe, were of a size altogether exceptional in those days. At a time when a small ship-of-the-line measured from fourteen to sixteen hundred tons, and the traders between America and Europe averaged under three hundred, a large proportion of the East Indiamen were of twelve hundred tons burden, exceeding considerably the dimensions of a first-class frigate. [257 - James (Naval Hist., ed. 1878, vol. iii. p. 249) says that though denominated 1,200-ton ships, the registered tonnage of most exceeds 1,300, and in some cases amounts to 1,500 tons.] Being pierced for numerous guns and carrying many men, both crew and passengers, among whom often figured considerable detachments of troops, they presented a very formidable appearance, and were more than once mistaken for ships of war by French cruisers; so much so that in the year 1804 a body of them in the China seas, by their firm bearing and compact order, imposed upon a hostile squadron of respectable size, commanded by an admiral of cautious temper though of proved courage, making him for a brief period the laughing stock of both hemispheres, and bringing down on his head a scathing letter from the emperor. Their armament, however, was actually feeble, especially in the earlier part of the French Revolution. About the year 1801, it was determined to increase it so that the larger ships should carry thirty-eight 18-pounders; [258 - Nav. Chronicle, vol. vi. p. 251.] but the change seems to have been but imperfectly effected, and upon the occasion in question the ships which thus "bluffed" Admiral Linois were none of them a match for a medium frigate. It is, indeed, manifestly impossible to combine within the same space the stowage of a rich and bulky cargo and the fighting efficiency of a ship of war of the same tonnage. Still, the batteries, though proportionately weak, were too powerful for ordinary privateers to encounter, unless by a fortunate surprise; and, as the French entertained great, if not exaggerated, ideas of the dependence of Great Britain upon her Indian possessions, considerable efforts were made to carry on commerce-destroying in the Eastern seas by squadrons of heavy frigates, re-enforced occasionally by ships-of-the-line. These were the backbone of the guerre de course, but their efforts were supplemented by those of numerous privateers of less size, that preyed upon the coasting trade and the smaller ships, which, from China to the Red Sea, and throughout the Indian Ocean, whether under British or neutral flags, were carrying goods of British origin.

At the outbreak of the war Great Britain was taken unawares in India, as everywhere; and, as the operations in Europe and in the West Indies called for the first care of the government, the Indian seas were practically abandoned to the enemy for over a year. After the fall of Pondicherry, in September, 1793, Admiral Cornwallis returned to Europe with all his small squadron, leaving but a single sloop-of-war to protect the vast expanse of ocean covered by the commerce of the East India Company. [259 - Brenton's Naval Hist. (first ed.) vol. i. p. 346. Low's Indian Navy, vol. i. 204.] Not till the month of October, 1794, did his successor reach the station. Under these circumstances the losses were inevitably severe, and would have been yet more heavy had not the company itself fitted out several ships to cruise for the protection of trade. [260 - Low's Indian Navy, vol. i. 205. Milburn's Oriental Commerce, vol. i. 405.] An animated warfare, directed solely toward the destruction and protection of commerce, now ensued for several years, and was marked by some exceedingly desperate and well-contested frigate actions; as well as by many brilliant exploits of French privateersmen, among whom the name of Robert Surcouf has attained a lasting celebrity. Depending at first upon the islands of France and Bourbon as their base of operations, the distance of these from the peninsula of Hindoostan, combined with the size of the East India ships, compelled the employment of relatively large vessels, able to keep the sea for long periods and to carry crews which would admit of many detachments to man prizes without unduly weakening the fighting capacity. When, in 1795, the conquest of Holland and flight of the Orange government turned the Dutch from enemies into allies of France, their colonies and ports became accessories of great importance to the cruisers, owing to their nearness to the scene of action and especially to the great trade route between China and Europe. On the other hand the British, long debarred from rewards for their efforts, other than recaptures of their own merchant ships, now found the whole of the Dutch trade thrown open to them, and the returns bear witness both to its numbers and to their activity.

Notwithstanding, however, the unprotected state of British commerce in the early years of the war, and the distinguished activity of the French cruisers, the insurance premiums at no time rose to the sums demanded in 1782, when a concentrated effort to control the sea by a fleet, under Admiral Suffren, was made by France. [261 - The premium of insurance, which had in 1782 been fifteen guineas per cent on ships engaged in the trade with China and India, did not exceed half that rate at any period between the spring of 1793 and the end of the struggle. (Lindsay's Merchant Shipping, vol. ii. 265. See also Chalmer's Historical View, pp. 308-310.)] At that time the premiums were fifteen per cent; between 1798 and 1805 they fluctuated between eight and twelve per cent. In 1805 the chief command in the Indian seas was given to Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, afterwards Lord Exmouth, and by his skilful arrangements such security was afforded to the trade from Bombay to China, one of the most exposed parts of the Eastern commercial routes, that the premium fell to eight per cent, with a return of three per cent, if sailing with convoy. Under this systematic care the losses by capture amounted to but one per cent on the property insured, being less than those by the dangers of the sea. [262 - Letter of Bombay merchants to Sir Edward Pellew; Nav. Chron., vol. xxiii. 107.] But during the very period that these happy results were obtained by wisely applying the principle of concentration of effort to the protection of commerce, disaster was overtaking the trade of Calcutta; which lost nineteen vessels in two months through the neglect of its merchants to accept the convoys of the admiral. [263 - Robert Surcouf, by J. K. Laughton; Colburn's United Service Magazine, 1883, part i. pp. 331, 332.] In fact, as the small proportionate loss inflicted by scattered cruisers appears to indicate the inconclusiveness of that mode of warfare, so the result of the convoy system, in this and other instances, warrants the inference that, when properly systematized and applied, it will have more success as a defensive measure than hunting for individual marauders,—a process which, even when most thoroughly planned, still resembles looking for a needle in a haystack.

Soon after this time the British government reverted most properly to the policy of Pitt, by directing expeditions against the enemies' colonies, the foreign bases of their Sea Power, and, in the absence of great fleets, the only possible support upon which commerce-destroying can depend; with whose fall it must also fall. The islands of Bourbon and of France capitulated in 1810, the same year that saw the surrender of Guadaloupe, the last survivor of the French West India Islands. This was followed in 1811 by the reduction of the Dutch colony of Java. Thus "an end was put to the predatory warfare which had been successfully carried on against the British trade in India for a number of years." [264 - Milburn's Oriental Commerce, vol. i. p. xci.]

While the scattered cruisers of France were thus worrying, by a petty and inconclusive warfare, the commerce of Great Britain and its neutral carriers, the great British fleets, being left in quiet possession of the seas by the avowed purpose of the Directory to limit its efforts to the guerre de course, swept from the ocean every merchant ship wearing a hostile flag, and imposed upon the neutral trade with France the extreme limitations of maritime international law, as held by the British courts. Toward the end of the war, indeed, those principles were given an extension, which the government itself admitted was beyond anything before claimed as reconcilable with recognized law. The precise amount of the injury done, the exact number of the vessels detained, sent in, and finally condemned, in all parts of the world will perhaps never be known; it is certainly not within the power of the present writer to determine them. The frequent, though not complete, returns of British admirals give some idea of the prevailing activity, which will also appear from the occasional details that must be cited in the latter part of this chapter. Into the single port of Plymouth, in the eight years and a half ending September 29, 1801, there were sent 948 vessels of all nations; [265 - Naval Chronicle, vol. vii. 276.] of which 447 were enemy's property, 156 recaptured British, and the remainder neutrals, belonging mostly to America, Denmark, and Sweden, the three chief neutral maritime states. From Jamaica, the British commander-in-chief reports that, between March 1 and August 3, 1800,—that is, in five months,—203 vessels have been captured, detained, or destroyed.[1] This was in but one part of the West Indian Seas. The admiral at the Leeward Islands reports that in two months of the same year 62 vessels had been sent in.[1] In five months, ending September 3, 1800, Lord Keith reports from the Mediterranean 180 captures. [266 - Naval Chronicle, vol. iv. pp. 150, 151, 326.] How far these instances may be accepted as a fair example of the usual results of British cruising, it is impossible to say; but it may be remarked that they all occur at a period when the war had been raging for seven years, and that captures are more numerous at the beginning than at the latter end of long hostilities. In war, as in all states of life, people learn to accommodate themselves to their conditions, to minimize risks; and even prize lists become subject to the uniformity of results observed in other statistics.

Whatever the particulars of French losses, however, they are all summed up in the unprecedented admission of the Directory, in 1799, that "not a single merchant ship is on the sea carrying the French flag." This was by no means a figure of speech, to express forcibly an extreme depression. It was the statement of a literal fact. "The former sources of our prosperity," wrote M. Arnould, Chef du Bureau du Commerce, as early as 1797, "are either lost or dried up. Our agricultural, manufacturing, and industrial power is almost extinct." And again he says, "The total number of registers issued to French ships from September, 1793, to September, 1796, amounts only to 6028." Of these, 3351 were undecked and of less than thirty tons burden. "The maritime war paralyzes our distant navigation and even diminishes considerably that on our coasts; so that a great number of French ships remain inactive, and perhaps decaying, in our ports. This remark applies principally to ships of over two hundred tons, the number of which, according to the subjoined table, [267 - Registration of vessels made in all ports of France (except the newly acquired departments) from September 1793, to September 1796:—It should be explained that as all ships, old as well as new, had to register, this gives the total of French shipping without deduction for losses.] amounts only to 248. Before the revolution the navigation of the seas of Europe and to the French colonies employed more than 2,000 ships."

In the year ending September 20, 1800, according to a report submitted to the consuls, [268 - Moniteur, 26 Floréal, An 9 (May 16, 1801).] France received directly from Asia, Africa, and America, all together, less than $300,000 worth of goods; while her exports to those three quarters of the world amounted to only $56,000. Whether these small amounts were carried in French or neutral bottoms is immaterial; the annihilation of French shipping is proved by them. The same report shows that the average size of the vessels, which, by hugging closely the coast, avoided British cruisers and maintained the water traffic between France and her neighbors, Holland, Spain, and Italy, was but thirty-six tons. Intercourse by water is always easier and, for a great bulk, quicker than by land; but in those days of wagon carriage and often poor roads it was especially so. In certain districts of France great distress for food was frequently felt in those wars, although grain abounded in other parts; because the surplus could not be distributed rapidly by land, nor freely by water. For the latter conveyance it was necessary to depend upon very small vessels, unfit for distant voyages, but which could take refuge from pursuers in the smallest port, or be readily beached; and which, if captured, would not singly be a serious loss.

Towards the end of 1795, a contemporary British authority states that over three thousand British ships had been captured, and about eight hundred French. [269 - Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 359.] This was, however, confessedly only an estimate, and probably, so far as concerns the British losses, a large exaggeration. Ten years later a member of the House of Commons, speaking with a view rather to disparage the earlier administration, gave the British losses for the same years as 1,395. [270 - Cobbett's Parl. Debates, March 15, 1804, p. 921.] Lloyd's lists give the whole number of British captured, for the years 1793-1800, both inclusive, as 4,344, of which 705 were recaptured; leaving a total loss of 3,639. [271 - Naval Chronicle, vol. xvii. p. 369.] Assuming, what is only for this purpose admissible, that the average loss each year was nearly the same, these figures would give for the three years, 1793-1795, 1,365 as the number of captures made by hostile cruisers. In the tables appended to Norman's "Corsairs of France" the losses for the same period are given as 1,636. [272 - Norman gives the total number of captures, 1793-1800, as 5,158 against Lloyd's 3,639. Through the kindness of Captain H. M. Hozier, Secretary of Lloyd's, the author has received a list of British ships taken, annually, 1793-1814. This list makes the numbers considerably less than the earlier one used in the text. By it, between 1793 and 1800, both inclusive, only 3,466 British ships were captured.]

Finally, the number of prizes brought into French ports up to September 16, 1798, was stated by M. Arnould, in the Conseil des Anciens, as being 2,658. The table from which his figures were taken he called "an authentic list, just printed, drawn up in the office of the French Ministry of Marine, of all prizes made since the outbreak of the war." [273 - Moniteur, 16 Pluviôse, An 7 (Feb. 5, 1799), pp. 582, 583.] It included vessels of all nationalities, during a period when France had not only been at war with several states, but had made large seizures of neutral vessels upon various pretexts. Of the entire number M. Arnould considered that not more than 2,000 were British. If we accept his estimate, only 900 British ships would have been taken in three years. It is to be observed, however, as tending to reconcile the discrepancy between this and the English accounts, that the tables used by him probably did not give, or at most gave very imperfectly, the French captures made in the East and West Indies; and, furthermore, the aggregate British losses, as given by Lloyd's lists, and by Norman's tables, include captures made by the Dutch and Spaniards as well as by the French. [274 - Guérin gives the total number of captures by France from Great Britain, from 1793 to the Peace of Amiens, March 25, 1802, including both ships of war and merchant vessels, as 2,172; while the French lost in all, from ships-of-the-line to fishing-boats, between 1,520 and 1,550. Of this total, 27 were ships-of-the-line and 70 frigates,—a number considerably below that given by James, the painstaking English naval historian. Allowing 150 as the number of smaller naval vessels taken, there would remain, by Guérin's estimate, about 1,300 French trading vessels which fell into British hands. Of these a large proportion must have been the chasse-marées that carried on the coasting trade (as their expressive name implies); attacks on which formed so frequent and lucrative a diversion from the monotony of blockade service. (Hist. Mar de la France, vol. iii. p. 674.)Guérin claims great carefulness, but the author owns to much distrust of his accuracy. It is evident, however, from all the quotations, that Fox's statement, May 24, 1795, that in the second year of the war France had taken 860 ships, was much exaggerated. (Speeches, vol. v. p. 419. Longman's, 1815.)]

The British reports of their own losses are thus seen largely to exceed those made by the French. According equal confidence to the statements of Sir William Curtis, of Norman, and of Lloyd's list, we should reach an annual loss by capture of 488 British ships; which would give a total, in the twenty-one years of war, from 1793-1814, [275 - In this period of twenty-two years there were eighteen months of maritime peace.] of 10,248. Norman's grand total of 10,871 considerably exceeds this amount; but it will be safer, in considering a subject of so great importance as the absolute injury done, and effect produced, by war upon commerce, to accept the larger figure, or to say, in round numbers, that eleven thousand British vessels were captured by the enemy during the protracted and desperate wars caused by the French Revolution. It is the great and conspicuous instance of commerce-destroying, carried on over a long series of years, with a vigor and thoroughness never surpassed, and supported, moreover, by an unparalleled closure of the continental markets of Great Britain. The Directory first, and Napoleon afterwards, abandoned all attempts to contest the control of the sea, and threw themselves, as Louis XIV. had done before them, wholly upon a cruising war against commerce. It will be well in this day, when the same tendency so extensively prevails, to examine somewhat carefully what this accepted loss really meant, how it was felt by the British people at the time, and what expectation can reasonably be deduced from it that, by abandoning military control of the sea, and depending exclusively upon scattered cruisers, a country dependent as Great Britain is upon external commerce can be brought to terms.

Evidently, a mere statement of numbers, such as the above, without any particulars as to size, or the value of cargoes, affords but a poor indication of the absolute or relative loss sustained by British commerce. It may, however, be used as a basis, both for comparison with the actual number of vessels entering and clearing annually from British ports, and also for an estimate as to the probable tonnage captured. The annual average of capture, deduced from 11,000 ships in twenty-one years is 524. In the three years 1793-1795, the average annual number of British vessels entering and clearing from ports of Great Britain was 21,560. [276 - Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv.] Dividing by 524, it is found that one fortieth, or two and a half per cent of British shipping, reckoning by numbers, was taken by the enemy. In the three years 1798-1800, 1801 being the year of broken hostilities, the average annual entries and departures were 21,369,[1] which again gives two and a half as the percentage of the captures. It must be noted, also, that only the commerce of England and Scotland with foreign countries, with the colonies, with Ireland and the Channel Islands, and with British India enters into these lists of arrivals and departures. The returns of that day did not take account of British coasters, nor of the local trade of the colonies, nor again of the direct intercourse between Ireland and ports other than those of Great Britain. Yet all these contributed victims to swell the list of prizes, [277 - Thus it is told of one of the most active of French privateersmen, sailing out of Dunkirk, that "the trade from London to Berwick, in the smacks, was his favorite object; not only from the value of the cargoes, but because they required few hands to man them, and from their good sailing were almost sure to escape British cruisers and get safely into ports of France or Holland." Between 1793 and 1801 this one man had taken thirty-four prizes. (Nav. Chron., vol. xii. p. 454.)] and so to increase very materially the apparent proportion of the latter to a commerce of which the returns cited present only a fraction. Unfortunately, the amount of the coasting trade cannot now be ascertained, [278 - Returns of the coasting trade were not made until 1824. Porter's Progress of the Nation, section iii. p. 77.] and the consequent deduction from the calculated two and a half per cent of loss can only be conjectured.

To obtain the tonnage loss there appears to the writer no fairer means than to determine the average tonnage of the vessels entering and departing as above, at different periods of the war. In the three years 1793-1795, the average size of each ship entering or sailing from the ports of Great Britain, including the Irish trade, was 121 tons. In the year 1800 the average is 126 tons. In 1809 it has fallen again to 121, and in 1812 to 115 tons. We cannot then go far wrong in allowing 125 tons as the average size of British vessels employed in carrying on the foreign and the coasting trade of Great Britain itself during the war. [279 - The merchant vessels of that day were generally small. From Macpherson's tables it appears that those trading between Great Britain and the United States, between 1792 and 1800, averaged from 200 to 230 tons; those to the West Indies and the Baltic about 250; to Germany, to Italy, and the Western Mediterranean, 150; to the Levant, 250 to 300, with some of 500 tons. The East India Company's ships, as has been said, were larger, averaging nearly 800 tons. The general average is reduced to that above given (125) by the large number of vessels in the Irish trade. In 1796 there were 13,558 entries and clearances from English and Scotch ports for Ireland, being more than half the entire number (not tonnage) of British ships employed in so-called foreign trade. The average size of these was only 80 tons. (Macpherson.) In 1806 there were 13,939 for Ireland to 5,211 for all other parts of the world, the average tonnage again being 80. (Porter's Progress of the Nation, part ii. pp. 85, 174.)Sir William Parker, an active frigate captain, who commanded the same ship from 1801 to 1811, was in that period interested in 52 prizes. The average tonnage of these, excluding a ship-of-the-line and a frigate, was 126 tons. (Life, vol. i. p. 412.)In 1798, 6,844 coasters entered or left London, their average size being 73 tons. The colliers were larger. Of the latter 3,289 entered or sailed, having a mean tonnage of 228. (Colquhoun's Commerce of the Thames, p. 13.)] On this allowance the aggregate tonnage lost in the 11,000 British prizes, would be 1,375,000 in twenty-one years. In these years the aggregate British tonnage entering and leaving the ports of Great Britain, exclusive of the great neutral tonnage employed in carrying for the same trade, amounted to over 55,000,000; [280 - The returns for 1813 were destroyed by fire, and so an exact aggregate cannot be given. Two million tons are allowed for that year, which is probably too little.] so that the loss is again somewhat less than one fortieth, or 2½ per cent.

Another slight indication of the amount of loss, curious from its coincidence with the above deductions, is derived from the report of prize goods received into France in the year ending September, 1800, which amounted to 29,201,676 francs. At the then current value of the franc this was equivalent to £1,216,000. The real value of British exports for 1800 was £56,000,000, the prize goods again being rather less than one fortieth of the amount. The imports, however, being also nearly £56,000,000, the loss on the entire amount falls to one eightieth. It is true that many of these prize goods were probably taken in neutrals, but on the other hand the report does not take into account French capture in the colonies and East Indies; nor those made by Holland and Spain, the allies of France.

If the total number of vessels belonging to Great Britain and all her dependencies be taken, as the standard by which to judge her loss by captures, it will be found that in 1795 they amounted to 16,728;[281 - Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 368, 535.] in 1800, 17,885;[282 - Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 368, 535.] in 1805, 22,051;[283 - Porter's Progress of the Nation, part ii. p. 171.] in 1810, 23,703.[284 - Porter's Progress of the Nation, part ii. p. 171.] Using again 524 as the annual number of captures, the annual proportion of loss is seen gradually to fall from a very little over 3 per cent, in the first year, to somewhat less than 2½ per cent, in the last.

Finally, it may be added that the Lloyd's list before quoted gives the total number of losses by sea risks, 1793-1800, as 2,967; which, being contrasted with the losses by capture, 3,639, shows that the danger from enemy's cruisers very little exceeded those of the ocean. To offset, though only partially, her own losses, Great Britain received prize goods, during the same years, to the amount of over £5,000,000. [285 - Chalmer's Historical View, p. 307.] There were also engaged in carrying on her commerce, in 1801, under the British flag, 2,779 vessels, measuring 369,563 tons, that had been brought into her ports as prizes; which numbers had increased in 1811 to 4,023 ships and 536,240 tons. [286 - Porter, part ii. p. 173. The Naval Chronicle, vol. xxix. p. 453, gives an official tabular statement of prize-vessels admitted to registry between 1793 and 1812. In 1792 there were but 609, total tonnage 93,994.]

Taking everything together, it seems reasonable to conclude that the direct loss to the nation, by the operation of hostile cruisers, did not exceed 2½ per cent of the commerce of the Empire; and that this loss was partially made good by the prize ships and merchandise taken by its own naval vessels and privateers. A partial, if not a complete, compensation for her remaining loss is also to be found in the great expansion of her mercantile operations carried on under neutral flags; for, although this too was undoubtedly harassed by the enemy, yet to it almost entirely was due the increasing volume of trade that poured through Great Britain to and from the continent of Europe, every ton of which left a part of its value to swell the bulk of British wealth. The writings of the period show that the injuries due to captured shipping passed unremarked amid the common incidents and misfortunes of life; neither their size nor their effects were great enough to attract public notice, amid the steady increase of national wealth and the activities concerned in amassing it. "During all the operations of war and finance," says one writer, "the gains of our enterprising people were beyond all calculation, however the unproductive classes may have suffered from the depreciation of money and the inequalities of taxation. Our commerce has become more than double its greatest extent during the happiest years of peace." [287 - Chalmer's Historical View, p. 351.] There were, indeed, darker shades to the picture, for war means suffering as well as effort; but with regard to the subject-matter of this chapter, Commerce, and its fate in this war, there was for many years but one voice, for but one was possible. The minister, essentially a master of trade and finance, delighted year by year to enlarge upon the swelling volume of business and the growing returns of the revenue. Not only did the new taxes bring in liberally, but the older ones were increasingly productive. These signs of prosperity were not seen all at once. The first plunge into the war was followed, as it always is, by a shrinking of the system and a contraction of the muscles; but as the enemy more and more surrendered the control of the sea, as the naval victories of the years 1797 and 1798 emphasized more and more the absolute dominion of Great Britain over it, and as the new channels of enterprise became familiar, the energies of the people expanded to meet the new opportunities.

The share borne by neutral shipping in the extension and maintenance of this extraordinary fabric of prosperity, thus existing in the midst of all the sorrow, suffering, and waste of war, must next be considered; for it was the cause of the remarkable measures taken by both belligerents against neutral trade, which imparted so singular and desolating a character to the closing years of the struggle and affected deeply the commerce of the whole world. At the very beginning of the war Great Britain proceeded to avail herself of the services of neutrals, by a remission of that part of the Navigation Act which required three fourths of the crews of British merchantmen to be British subjects. On the 30th of April, 1793, this was so modified as to permit three fourths to be foreigners, to replace the large body taken for the fleets. This was followed, from time to time, as the number of enemies multiplied through the extending conquests and alliances of France, by a series of orders and proclamations, infringing more and more upon the spirit of the Act, with the direct and obvious purpose of employing neutral vessels to carry on operations hitherto limited to the British flag. The demands of the navy for seamen, the risks of capture, the delays of convoy, entirely arrested, and even slightly set back, the development of the British carrying trade; while at the same time the important position of Great Britain as the great manufacturing nation, coinciding with a diminution in the productions of the Continent, consequent upon the war, and a steadily growing demand for manufactured goods on the part of the United States, called imperiously for more carriers. The material of British traffic was increasing with quickened steps, at the very time that her own shipping was becoming less able to bear it. Thus in 1797, when the British navy was forced to leave the Mediterranean, all the Levant trade, previously confined to British ships, was thrown open to every neutral. In 1798, being then at war with Spain, the great raw material, Spanish wool, essential to the cloth manufactures, was allowed to enter in vessels of any neutral country. The produce even of hostile colonies could be imported by British subjects in neutral bottoms, though not for consumption in England, but for re-exportation; a process by which it paid a toll to Great Britain, without directly affecting the reserved market of the British colonist. The effect of these various conditions and measures can best be shown by a few figures, which indicate at once the expansion of British commerce, the arrest of British carrying trade, and the consequent growth of the neutral shipping. In 1792, the last year of peace, the total British exports and imports amounted to £44,565,000; in 1796 to £53,706,000; in 1800, the last unbroken year of war, to £73,723,000. [288 - The amounts given are those known as the "official values," assigned arbitrarily to the specific articles a century before. The advantage attaching to this system is, that, no fluctuation of price entering as a factor, the values continue to represent from year to year the proportion of trade done. Official values are used throughout this chapter when not otherwise stated. The "real values," deduced from current prices, were generally much greater than the official. Thus, in 1800, the whole volume of trade, by official value £73,723,000, was by real value £111,231,000. The figures are taken from Macpherson's Annals of Commerce.] For the same years the carrying of this trade was done, in 1792, by 3,151,389 tons of British, and 479,630 tons of foreign shipping; in 1796, by 2,629,575 British, and 998,427 foreign; in 1800, by 2,825,078 British and 1,448,287 foreign. Thus, while there was so great an increase in the commerce of the kingdom, and it employed nearly 650,000 more tons of shipping in 1800 than in 1792, the amount carried in British ships had fallen off; and the proportion of neutral bottoms had risen from thirteen to nearly thirty-four per cent.

The significance of these facts could not escape the French government, nor yet the jealousies of certain classes connected with the carrying trade in Great Britain herself; but in the first war the latter were not joined by the other powerful and suffering interests, which gradually impelled the ministry into a series of acts deeply injurious to all neutrals, but chiefly to the United States. In France, the early effusiveness of the revolutionists toward England, based upon the hope that she too would be swept into the torrent of their movement, had been quickly chilled and turned to bitterness, greater even than that which had so long divided the two nations. Victorious everywhere upon the Continent, the government saw before it only one unconquerable enemy, the Power of the Sea; it knew that she, by her subsidies and her exhortations, maintained the continental states in their recurring hostilities, and it saw her alone, amid the general confusion and impoverishment, preserve quiet and increase a wealth which was not only brilliant, but solid. The Directory therefore reached the conclusion, which Napoleon made the basis of his policy and which he never wearied of proclaiming, that Great Britain maintained the war and promoted the discord of nations for the simple purpose of founding her own prosperity upon the ruin of all other commerce, her power upon the ruin of all other navies. [289 - The French will not suffer a Power which seeks to found its prosperity upon the misfortunes of other states, to raise its commerce upon the ruin of that of other states, and which, aspiring to the dominion of the seas, wishes to introduce everywhere the articles of its own manufacture and to receive nothing from foreign industry, any longer to enjoy the fruit of its guilty speculations.—Message of Directory to the Council of Five Hundred, Jan. 4, 1798.] At the same time the French government held tenaciously to that profound delusion, the bequest to it from past generations of naval officers and statesmen, that a war directed against the commerce of Great Britain was a sure means of destroying her. It knew that hosts of privateers were employed, and that very many British prizes were brought in; yet, withal, the great Sea Power moved steadily on, evidently greater and stronger as the years went by. It knew also that her manufactures were increasing, that their products filled the Continent; that the produce of the East and of the West, of the Baltic and of the Mediterranean, centred in Great Britain; and that through her, not the Continent only, but France herself, drew most of her tropical articles of consumption. There was but one solution for this persistent escape from apparently sure destruction; and that was to be found in the support of the neutral carrier and the pockets of the neutral consumer. From this premise the fatal logic of the French Revolution was irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that, as every neutral ship engaged in the British carrying trade was a help to England, it was consequently an enemy to France and liable to capture. [290 - Message of Directory to Council of Five Hundred, Jan. 4, 1798.] Napoleon but amplified this precedent when he declared that there were no more neutrals, and placed before Sweden, longing only for quiet, the option "war with France or cannon-balls for English vessels approaching your ports."

The exceptionally intense spirit which animated the parties to this war trenched with unusual severity upon the interests of neutral powers, always more or less in conflict with the aims of belligerents. These questions also received new importance, because now appeared for the first time a neutral maritime state, of great extent and rapidly growing, whose interests and ambitions at that time pointed to shipping and carrying trade as forms of enterprise for which it had received from nature peculiar facilities. In all previous wars the Americans had acted as the colonists of Great Britain, either loyal or in revolt. In 1793 they had for four years been a nation in the real sense of the word, and Washington's first term closed. In the very first Congress measures were taken for developing American shipping, by differential duties upon native and foreign ships. [291 - The act imposing these duties went into effect Aug. 15, 1789. Vessels built in the United States, and owned by her citizens, paid an entrance duty of six cents per ton; all other vessels fifty cents. A discount of ten per cent on the established duties was also allowed upon articles imported in vessels built and owned in the country. (Annals of Congress. First Congress, pp. 2131, 2132.)] From the impulse thus given, combined with the opening offered by the increase of British trade and the diminished employment of British shipping, the ship-builders and merchants extended their operations rapidly. By the report of a committee of the House, January 10, 1803, it appears that the merchant tonnage of the United States was then inferior to that of no other country, except Great Britain. [292 - Am. State Papers, vol. x. 502.] In 1790 there had entered her ports from abroad, 355,000 tons of her own shipping and 251,000 foreign, of which 217,000 were British. [293 - Ibid., p. 389.] In the year 1801 there entered 799,304 tons of native shipping, [294 - Ibid., p. 528.] and of foreign but 138,000. [295 - Ibid., p. 584.] The amount of British among the latter is not stated; but in the year 1800 there cleared from Great Britain under her own flag, for the United States, but 14,381 tons. [296 - Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 535.] Figures like these give but a comparative and partial view of the activity of American shipping, leaving out of account all the carrying done by it outside the ken of the home authorities; but it is safe to say that the United States contributed annually at least six hundred thousand tons to maintain the traffic of the world, which, during those eventful years, centred in Great Britain and ministered to her power. Among the forms of gain thus opened to American traders there was one to which allusion only will here be made, because at a later period it became the source of very great trouble, leading step by step to the war of 1812. This was the carriage of the productions of French and other colonies, enemies of Great Britain, to the United States, and thence re-exporting them to Europe.

Besides the new state in the Western Hemisphere, there were three others whose isolated position had hitherto given them the character of neutrals in the maritime wars of the eighteenth century. These were the Baltic countries, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, which had combined in 1780 to defend their neutral rights, if need were, by force of arms. The power of this confederacy to assume the same attitude in 1793 was broken by the policy of Russia. By whatever motives swayed, the Empress Catharine took decided ground against the French Revolution. On the 25th of March, 1793, a convention between her and the British government was signed, by which both parties agreed, not only to close their own ports against France and not to permit the exportation of food to that country, but also "to unite all their efforts to prevent other powers, not implicated in the war, from giving, on this occasion of common concern to every civilized state, any protection whatever, directly or indirectly in consequence of their neutrality, to the commerce or property of the French on the sea." [297 - Am. State Papers, vol. i. 243.] How the empress understood this engagement was shown by her notification, during the same summer, to the courts of Sweden and Denmark, that she would station a fleet in the North Sea to prevent neutrals bound to France from proceeding. [298 - Annual Register, 1793, p. 346*.] Great Britain had already—June 8, 1793—directed the commanders of cruisers to detain all vessels loaded with flour or grain, bound to French ports, and to send them to England, where the cargo would be purchased and freight paid by the British government. [299 - Am. State Papers, i. 240. A complete series of the orders injuriously affecting United States commerce, issued by Great Britain and France, from 1791 to 1808, can be found in the Am. State Papers, vol. iii. p. 262.] These instructions were duly communicated to the government of the neutral states, which protested with more or less vigor and tenacity, but found themselves helpless to resist force with force. Singularly enough, the French government had preceded the British on this occasion, having issued orders to the same effect on the 9th of the previous May; but the fact appears to have escaped the ministry, for, in justifying their action to the United States, they do not allude to it. Their course is defended on the broad ground that, from the character of the war and the situation of France, there was a fair prospect of starving her into submission, [300 - Am. State Papers, i. 240, 241. How probable this result was may be seen from the letters of Gouverneur Morris, Oct. 19, 1793, and March 6, 1794. State Papers, vol. i. pp. 375, 404.] and that under such circumstances provisions, always a questionable article, became contraband of war. The answer was not satisfactory to the neutral, deprived of part of his expected gains, but the argument was one of those that admit of no appeal except to arms. A further justification of the order was found by the British ministry in the undoubted fact that "the French government itself was the sole legal importer of grain in France" at that time; and therefore "the trade was no longer to be regarded as a mercantile speculation of individuals, but as an immediate operation of the very persons who have declared war, and are now carrying it on, against Great Britain." The American minister to France, Monroe, confirms this, in his letter of October 16, 1794: "The whole commerce of France, to the absolute exclusion of individuals, is carried on by the government itself." [301 - Am. State Papers, vol. i. p. 679.]

Soon after, on the 6th of November, 1793, another order was issued by the British ministry, directing the seizure of "all ships laden with goods the produce of any colony belonging to France, or carrying provisions or other supplies for the use of any such colony." This order was based upon the Rule of 1756, so called from the war in which it first came conspicuously into notice, and the principle of which, as stated by British authorities, was that a trade forbidden to neutrals by the laws of a country, during peace, could not be lawfully carried on by them in time of war, for the convenience of the belligerent; because, by such employment, their ships "were in effect incorporated in the enemy's navigation, having adopted his commerce and character and identified themselves with his interests and purposes." [302 - Wheaton's International Law, p. 753.] At that time the colonial trade was generally reserved to the mother country; and against it particularly, together with the coasting trade, similarly restricted, was this ruling of the British courts and government directed. Neutrals replied, "Because the parent country monopolizes in peace the whole commerce of its colonies, does it follow that in war it should have no right to regulate it at all?" [303 - Monroe to the British Minister of Foreign Affairs. Am. State Papers, vol. ii. p. 735.] "We deny that municipal regulations, established in peace, can in any wise limit the public rights of neutrals in time of war." [304 - Reply to "War in Disguise, or Frauds of the Neutral Flag," by Gouverneur Morris, New York, 1806, p. 22.] It is evident that these two lines of argument do not fairly meet each other; they resemble rather opposite and equal weights in a balance, which will quickly be overturned when passion or interest, combined with power, is thrown in upon either side. Starting from such fundamentally different premises, interested parties might argue on indefinitely in parallel lines, without ever approaching a point of contact.

The chief present interest in this question, referring as it does to an obsolete colonial policy, is as illustrative of one of those dead-locks, which, occurring at a critical moment, when passion or interest is aroused, offer no solution but by war. It was useless to point out that Great Britain relaxed in every direction her own peace regulations, for the advantage of British commerce in the present contest. The reply was perfectly apt, that she did not dispute the right of her enemy to avail himself of any help the neutral could give; she only asserted the determination not to permit the neutral to extend it with impunity. There was no doubt, in the mind of any considerable body of Englishmen, as to the perfect soundness of the English doctrine. Lord Howick, who, as Mr. Grey, had embarrassed his party in 1792 by the exuberance of his liberalism, [305 - Russell's Life of Fox, vol. ii. p. 281.] as foreign minister in 1807 wrote: "Neutrality, properly considered, does not consist in taking advantage of every situation between belligerent states by which emolument may accrue to the neutral, whatever may be the consequences to either belligerent party; but in observing a strict and honest impartiality, so as not to afford advantage in the war to either; and, particularly, in so far restraining its trade to the accustomed course which it held in time of peace, as not to render assistance to one belligerent in escaping the effects of the other's hostilities." [306 - Letter to Danish Minister, March 17, 1807. Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. x. p. 406.] An agreement among any number of the subjects of the interested nation proves nothing as to the right of the question, but the irreconcilable divergence of views at this time shows most clearly the necessity, under which every country lies, to be ready to support its own sense of its rights and honor by force, if necessary.

Under the order of November 6, some hundreds of American ships were seized and brought into West Indian ports by British cruisers. [307 - A letter from an American consul in the West Indies, dated March 7, 1794, gives 220 as the number. This was, however, only a partial account, the orders having been recently received. (Am. State Papers, i. p. 429.)] The application of the order to them was, however, liable to two serious objections, even admitting the principle. In the first place, it was made without warning, under a rule that was at least not generally accepted; and in the second place, the trade between the French West India Islands and the United States had been permitted, before the war, in vessels of sixty tons and upwards. [308 - By the ordinance of Aug. 30, 1784. See Annals of Congress, Jan. 13, 1794, p. 192.] In the year ending September 30, 1790, fifty-seven thousand tons of American shipping entered home ports from the French colonies. The trade, therefore, was one that existed prior to the war, and so did not come under the rule of 1756. [309 - The National Convention, immediately after the outbreak of war, on the 17th of February, 1793, gave a great extension to the existing permission of trade between the United States and the French colonies; but this could not affect the essential fact that the trade, under some conditions, had been allowed in peace.] The order of November 6 was not made public until nearly the end of the year; the United States minister in London not receiving a copy until Christmas Day. He hastened at once to protest, but before he could obtain an audience a second was issued, January 8, 1794, revoking the former and limiting the operations of the rule to vessels bound from the colonies direct to Europe. Although the principle was maintained by the new order, and not admitted by the United States, still, as their own trade was excepted, much dissatisfaction was removed.

The serious nature of the difficulties that had already arisen determined the government to send an extraordinary envoy to England. John Jay was nominated to this office, and reached London in June, 1794. The British government, having already receded from its first position, as well as revoked the order of June 8, 1793, for the seizure of provisions, found no difficulty in assuming a conciliatory attitude. The result of Jay's mission was a treaty of Commerce and Navigation, concluded November 19, 1794, the first contracted between the two countries since the separation. The injuries done to American commerce, under the orders of November 6, were to be submitted to a joint commission. The report of the latter was not made until 1804, but by it compensation was made for most of the seizures; and it was claimed in the following year by Mr. Monroe, then envoy in London, that the decision of the commission definitely disposed of the principle of the Rule of 1756. It does not appear, however, that its power extended further than the settlement of the cases. There, its decision was to be final; but it had no power to commit either government to any general principle of international law not otherwise established. [310 - In fact Monroe, in another part of the same letter, avows: "The doctrine of Great Britain in every decision is the same.... Every departure from it is claimed as a relaxation of the principle, gratuitously conceded by Great Britain."] The Rule of 1756 was not mentioned in the treaty, and the failure to do so may be construed as a tacit acquiescence, or at least submission, on the part of the United States. [311 - Mr. Jay seems to have been under some misapprehension in this matter, for upon his return he wrote to the Secretary of State: "The treaty does prohibit re-exportation from the United States of West India commodities in neutral vessels; … but we may carry them direct from French and other West India islands to Europe." (Am. State Papers, i. 520.) This the treaty certainly did not admit.] On the other hand, considerable commercial advantages were obtained. Great Britain conceded to American ships the privilege of direct trade between their own country and the British East and West Indies, but they were precluded from carrying the produce of those colonies to other foreign ports. Indeed, so great was the anxiety of the British ministers to prevent coffee and sugar from being taken to Europe, indirectly, by neutral ships, that they insisted upon, and Jay admitted, a stipulation that while the trade with the British West Indies was permitted, the United States would not allow the carrying of any molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or cotton in American vessels to any other part of the world than to the United States. This would have stopped a profitable trade already open to American merchants, who first imported, and then re-exported to France, the produce of the French islands; the broken voyage being considered to purge the origin of the commodities. This article (the twelfth) was accordingly rejected by the Senate, and only as thus modified was the treaty ratified by both powers.

The French government had viewed with distrust the negotiation between Great Britain and the United States. Although assured by Mr. Jay, through the American minister at Paris, that the treaty contained an express stipulation guarding the existing conventions between France and his own country, the Directory had the insolence to demand a copy of the instrument, to which it considered itself entitled, although it had not yet been communicated to the United States government. When the terms finally became known, its indignation passed bounds. The principal points to which it took exception were two, wherein the United States admitted conditions favoring the interests of belligerents relatively to neutrals, and against which the chief efforts of the weaker maritime states had been addressed. The first of these was the well-settled principle that a neutral ship did not protect property belonging to an enemy, laden on board it. The United States had always admitted this as valid, while trying to introduce, as an innovation, the contrary rule. In the treaty of 1778 with France, the two countries had stipulated that in any future war in which one of them should be engaged the belligerent should respect his enemy's property, if under the flag of the other party to the compact; but the United States did not think that this agreement between two nations overturned for all others a settled usage. The interests of Great Britain indisposed her to accept the proposed change, and the old principle was explicitly accepted in the seventeenth article of Jay's treaty. The other point objected to by France referred to the definitions of contraband of war. This has always been, and still is, one of the most difficult problems of international law; for an article may be of the first importance in the wars of one age or one country, and of slight consequence in another century or a different scene. By Jay's treaty the United States allowed that naval stores were, and under some circumstances provisions might be, contraband of war, and therefore liable to seizure. A free trade in these articles was of great importance to the Americans; but they were weak then, as in a military sense they, with far less excuse, are now; and then, as now, they must submit in questions of doubtful right. The material interests of United States citizens, as distinguished from the national self-respect, were in part saved by Great Britain undertaking to pay for provisions when seized as contraband. All these conditions bore against the wishes of the French, who regarded the Americans as owing an undischarged debt of gratitude to them for the scanty, though certainly most important, aid extended in the Revolutionary struggle by the monarch whom his people had since beheaded; and from this time the arrogance with which the French government had treated that of the United States became tinged with acrimony. It refused to see the difficulties and weakness of the new and still scarcely cemented body of states; or that, indirectly, the bargain struck by the latter was upon the whole as advantageous to France herself as could be expected, when Great Britain had an absolute control over the sea and all that floated upon it. To imperious rebukes and reproaches succeeded a series of measures, outraging neutral and treaty rights, which finally led to hostilities between the two countries.

From the time of Jay's treaty to the peace of Amiens, and until the year 1804 in the following war, the relations between Great Britain and the United States remained on a fairly settled basis. Innumerable vexations, indeed, attended neutral commerce at the hands of cruisers who were willing on slight grounds to seize a prize, taking the chance of the courts deciding in their favor, and the delays of prize courts added greatly to the annoyance; but upon the whole American trade throve greatly. In June, 1797, the Secretary of State reported, in reply to a resolution of the House, that "captures and losses by British cruisers, it is presumed, have not been numerous; for the citizens of the United States having, these three years past, been accustomed to look to the government for aid in prosecuting these claims, it is not to be doubted that, generally, these cases have been reported to the Department." In 1801 there was an outbreak of lawless seizure in the West Indies. [312 - See letter of Thos. Fitzsimmons, Am. State Papers, vol. ii. 347.] The American vessels engaged in that trade were small, and, as legal expenses were the same for a large as for a small prize, the cost of a contest amounted to a sum very disproportionate to the value of the ship; so the captors hoped, by the well-known delays of procedure, to extort a compromise. An abuse of this kind, however outrageous, is different in principle from the direct action of a government; nor are such cases the only ones in which men have been willing to take dishonest advantage of the imperfections, ambiguities, or delays of the law. [313 - The pretexts for these seizures seem usually to have been the alleged contraband character of the cargoes.] The Secretary of State, in transmitting a report on the subject to the House of Representatives, said, "Neither the communications from our minister at London, nor my conversations with the Chargé d'Affaires of his Britannic Majesty in the United States, would lead to an opinion that any additional orders have lately been given by the British government, authorizing the system of depredation alluded to." [314 - Am. State Papers, vol. ii. 345.]

In fact, at this time Pitt's government seems to have considered all trade, which did not go direct to hostile countries, an advantage to Great Britain, and especially if it could be drawn to pass through her own ports. Accordingly, in January, 1798, a further relaxation of the Rule of 1756 was promulgated, extending to European neutrals the concession made in 1794 to the United States. British cruisers were now directed not to capture neutral ships, bound from the hostile colonies to Europe and laden with colonial produce, provided the latter had become neutral property and its destination was to their own country, or to a port of Great Britain. The final clause foreshadowed the policy of the Orders in Council of ten years later, towards which Great Britain, under the stress of war, was steadily gravitating. The law of self-preservation, divined by the instinct of the state, demanded that the United Kingdom should become, for that war, the storehouse of the world's commerce. The more thriving that commerce, the better for her, if it could be concentrated in her own borders. Thus France and the whole world should become tributary to a wealth and to a power by which, not Great Britain only, but the world should be saved. It was a great conception, of slow growth and gradual realization; it was disfigured in its progress by imperfections, blunders, and crimes; but it was radically sound and in the end victorious, for upon Great Britain and upon commerce hung the destinies of the world.

The action of France towards neutral, and especially towards American, vessels reflected the instability and excitement of the successive French governments, the violent passions of the time, and the uncertainty necessarily attendant upon the course of a nation which, having cut adrift from fixed principles and precedents, is guided only by changing impressions of right and wrong. The decree of the 9th of May, 1793, arresting vessels laden with provisions or carrying enemy's goods, was revoked as regards the United States on the 23d of the same month, because contrary to the treaty of 1778. On the 28th, five days later, the revocation was revoked, and the original order established. [315 - It will be remembered that the closing days of May witnessed the culmination of the death struggle between the Jacobins and Girondists, and that the latter finally fell on the second of June.] On the first of July the decision was again reversed and the treaty ordered to be observed; notwithstanding which the United States minister found it impossible to obtain the release of vessels seized contrary to its terms, and on the 27th of the month the last decision was again repealed. [316 - Am. State Papers, vol. i. pp. 284, 286, 748.] On the 22d of September the American minister writes: "I understand it is still in contemplation to repeal the decree I complained of, and that in the mean time it has not been transmitted to the tribunals. In effect, it can do very little harm; because the fleets of this country are confined by the enemy, and the privateers by a decree of the Convention." [317 - Ibid., p. 372.] Here matters rested during the Reign of Terror and until November 15, 1794, after the fall of Robespierre, when the Directory issued its first edict on the subject; reiterating that enemy's goods under the neutral flag would be considered liable to seizure, until the powers, enemies of France, should declare French property free on board neutral ships. This made the treatment of cargoes on American vessels depend, not upon the formal engagements of France with the United States, but upon the conduct of Great Britain; and it was succeeded, on the 3d of January, 1795, by a decree of revocation. Enemy's goods under neutral flags now remained exempt from capture until the 2d of July, 1796; when proclamation was issued, notifying neutral powers that the ships of the French Republic would be used against their merchant vessels, were it for the purpose of confiscation, search or detention, in the same manner that they suffered the English to act in regard to them. Great Britain was thus made supreme arbiter of the conduct of France towards neutrals.

This last step of the French government was directly traceable to its dissatisfaction with Jay's treaty, the ratifications of which had been exchanged at London on the 28th of October, 1795. On the 16th of February, 1796, the Minister of Foreign Affairs told Mr. Monroe, the American minister, that his government considered the alliance between the two countries, formed by the treaty of 1778, to be terminated, ipso facto, by Jay's treaty; and on the 7th of October he was further informed that the minister to the United States had been recalled and would not be replaced. Meanwhile President Washington, being dissatisfied with Monroe's conduct, had summoned him home and sent out Mr. Pinckney as his relief; but the Directory, on the 11th of December, refused to receive any minister plenipotentiary from the United States until the grievances it had alleged were redressed, [318 - One of these complaints was that the United States now prohibited the sale, in her ports, of prizes taken from the British by French cruisers. This practice, not accorded by the treaty with France, and which had made an unfriendly distinction against Great Britain, was forbidden by Jay's treaty.] and on the 25th of January, 1797, Pinckney was ordered to leave the country as an unauthorized foreigner.

France was now fully embarked on a course of violence toward the United States, which arose, not from any reasonable cause of discontent given, but from the disposition, identical with that shown toward the weaker European nations, to compel all countries to follow the dictates of the French policy. The utterly loose terms of the decree of July 2, 1796, authorized the seizure of any neutral vessel by a French captain, if, in his judgment, the conduct of Great Britain toward the neutral justified it; and left the ultimate fate of the prize to a tribunal governed only by its own opinion upon the same subject. "You are mistaken," said a French deputy, "if you think that a privateer sails furnished with instructions from the Minister of Marine, who ought to direct their action. The instructions are drawn up by his owners; they indicate to the captain what he may seize and what release. They compile for him his duties under all the rules, under all the laws, contradictory or otherwise, from the year 1400 up to the law of Nivôse 29, An 6" (Jan. 18, 1798). [319 - Speech of M. Dentzel in the Conseil des Anciens. Moniteur, An 7, p. 555.]

In the West Indies the French agents, practically removed from all control of the home government by the British command of the sea, issued on the 27th of November, 1796, a decree for the capture of Americans bound to, or coming from, British ports. They had already, on the first of August, directed that all vessels having contraband goods on board should be seized and condemned, whatever their destination, and although the accepted law condemned only the contraband articles themselves, not the ship nor the rest of the cargo. On the first of the following February the same commissioners ordered the capture of all neutrals sailing for the French islands which had surrendered to the enemy, and declared them good prize. That these acts fairly represented the purpose of the Directory may be inferred from the capture of American ships in European waters under the decree of July 2, and from the fact that the French consuls at Malaga and Cadiz interpreted the decree to authorize seizure and condemnation for the single circumstance of being destined for a British port. [320 - Am. State Papers, vol. ii. p. 28.] Over three hundred American vessels were thus seized, and most of them condemned. Envoys sent from the United States to treat concerning these matters said, in October, 1797, that France had violently taken from America over fifteen million dollars. [321 - Ibid., vol. ii. p. 163.] "At no period of the war," wrote they again, February 7, 1798, "has Britain undertaken to exercise such a power. At no period has she asserted such a right." [322 - Letter to Talleyrand, Am. State Papers, vol. ii. p. 178.] "Was there ever anything," said the deputy before quoted, "like the injustice of the condemnations in the Antilles?"

These irregular and arbitrary proceedings are chiefly significant as showing the lack of any fixed principles of action on the part of the French government and its agents; and they were closely connected with similar courses towards neutral vessels in French ports. At the outbreak of hostilities in 1793, one hundred and three American ships were embargoed at Bordeaux and detained more than a year, without any reason given; nor had the owners been indemnified in 1796. [323 - Ibid., vol. i. pp. 740, 748.] Cargoes were forcibly taken from vessels and payment either refused or offered in kind, and so delayed that in the West Indies alone the American losses were calculated at two million dollars. Besides these acts, which had the character of spoliations, the contracts and other financial obligations of the French government and its agents with citizens of the United States remained undischarged. The irritation between the two governments, and on the part of American merchants, continued to increase rapidly. The decree of July 2, the essence of which was the formal repudiation of a clause of the treaty of 1778, at the time when alone it became applicable, remained in force; and was rendered more obnoxious by a further order, of March 2, 1797, making more stringent the proofs of neutrality to be adduced before French tribunals and requiring papers which had long been disused.

At this time the astonishing successes of Bonaparte's Italian campaigns were approaching their triumphant conclusion. The battle of Rivoli had been fought on the 14th of January, 1797, [324 - The day after the news of Rivoli was received, Mr. Pinckney, who had remained in Paris, though unrecognized, was curtly directed to leave France.] Mantua capitulated on the 2d of February, and the Pope had been compelled to sue for peace. To Austria there remained only the hope of contesting the approach to her German dominions. The confidence of the Directors knew no bounds, and they now began to formulate the policy toward British commerce which Napoleon inherited from them. The design was formed of forcing the United States to recede from the obnoxious conventions of Jay's treaty; and the government of Holland, then entirely dependent upon that of France, was pressed to demand that Dutch property on board American vessels should be protected against British seizure, and to suggest the concurrence of the three republics against Great Britain. [325 - Am. State Papers, vol. ii. p. 13.] The Dutch accordingly represented "that, when circumstances oblige our commerce to confide its interests to the neutral flag of American vessels, it has a just right to insist that that flag be protected with energy;"[326 - Ibid., p. 14.] in other words, that, when the British control of the sea forced the Dutch ships from it, Dutch trade should be carried on under the American flag, and that the United States should fight to prevent the seizure of the Dutch property, although it admitted that the traditional law of nations would not justify it in so doing. On the 6th of May, 1797, Spain also, doubtless under the dictation of France, made the same demand.[327 - Ibid., p. 14.] Similar representations were made to the other neutral country, Denmark. Here is seen the forerunner of Napoleon's contention that, as against Great Britain's control of the sea, no state had a right to be neutral. Soon afterward the idea was carried farther. Denmark was requested to close the mouth of the Elbe to British commerce. "The French," wrote our minister to London on the 12th of March, 1797, "assign our treaty with England as the cause of their maritime conduct toward us, but they have recently demanded of Hamburg and Bremen to suspend all commerce with England. These have not complied, and the French minister has been recalled from Hamburg. The same demand has been made at Copenhagen, and the refusal has produced a sharp diplomatic controversy. These powers have made no late treaty with England." [328 - American State Papers, vol. ii. p. 14.]

Hostilities with Austria had ceased by the preliminaries of Leoben, April 18, followed, after long negotiations, by the treaty of Campo Formio, October 17, 1797. Of the coalition against France, Great Britain alone remained upright and defiant. She had in 1797, after Austria had yielded, offered to negotiate; but the terms demanded were such that she refused to accept them, and her envoy was ordered out of France as peremptorily as Mr. Pinckney had been a few months before. The Directory thought that the time was now come when she could be brought to unconditional surrender, and the weapon by which her commerce should be annihilated was already forged to its hand. On the 31st of October, 1796 (Brumaire 10, An 5), [329 - Moniteur, An v. pp. 164, 167.] a law had been passed by the Legislature forbidding entirely the admission of any British manufactured goods, directing that all persons who already had such in possession should declare them within three days, and that they should be at once packed and stored for re-exportation. In order to insure the execution of the statute, domiciliary visits were authorized everywhere within three leagues of the frontiers or sea-board, and throughout France the dwellings of all tradesmen were also open to search. Laws of similar purpose had been passed early in the war; [330 - March 1, and October 8, 1793. Ibid.] but they either had been found insufficient or were no longer applicable to the changed conditions of affairs. "Now that," to use the words of a deputy, "the flags of the Republic or those of its allies float over the sea from Embden to Trieste, and almost all the ports of the European seas are closed to England, we must stop the voluntary subsidies which are paid her by the consumers of English merchandise." [331 - Speech of Lecouteulx; Moniteur, An v. p. 176.] With Belgium annexed, with Spain and Holland vassals rather than allies, with the greater part of Italy in military occupation, it seemed possible to repel the entrance points of British goods to the Continent far from the French frontier, and by strict watchfulness to close the latter against such as worked their way to it.

The expectation, however, was deceived; the superior quality and abundance of British manufactures created a demand which evaded all watchfulness and enlisted all classes against the officials. The Directory therefore determined, toward the end of 1797, to put the law into force with all severity and to introduce another and final rigor into its maritime prize code. On the 4th of January, 1798, a message was sent to the council of Five Hundred, announcing that "on that very day the municipal administrators, the justices of the peace, the commissaries of the Directory, and the superintendents of customs, are proceeding in all the chief places of the departments, in all the ports, and in all the principal communes, to seize all English merchandise now in France in contravention of the law of Brumaire 10, An 5. Such is the first act by which, now that peace is given to the Continent, the war declared long since against England is about to assume the real character that belongs to it." But more was needed. Neutral vessels were in the habit of entering British ports, shipping British goods, and carrying on British trade; they were even known, when opportunity offered, to introduce articles of British manufacture, directly or indirectly, into France. By so doing they aided Great Britain and actually took part in the war. "The Directory, therefore, thinks it urgent and necessary to pass a law declaring that the character of vessels, rela tive to their quality of neutral or enemy, shall be determined by their cargo; … in consequence, that every vessel found at sea, having on board English merchandise as her cargo, in whole or in part, shall be declared lawful prize, whosoever shall be the proprietor of this merchandise, which shall be reputed contraband for this cause alone, that it comes from England or her possessions." This decree was adopted without discussion, in the very terms of the Directory's message, on the 18th of January, 1798. From that time forward, to use the expression of a French deputy, speaking a year later on the proposed repeal of the law, "if a handkerchief of English origin is found on board a neutral ship, both the rest of the cargo and the ship itself are subject to condemnation." It is, perhaps, well to point out that this differed from the Rule of 1756, by forbidding a trade which at all times had been open to neutrals, in peace as in war. It differed from the old rule condemning enemy's property found in neutral bottoms, by condemning also neutral property of hostile origin, together with the whole cargo and the ship, as contaminated by the presence of any British goods.

Nevertheless, British commerce continued to thrive, and was rather benefited than injured by the new law. What the indomitable purpose, unlimited power, and extraordinary mental and physical activity of Napoleon could only partially accomplish, proved to be wholly beyond the weak arm of the Directory. When war first shut the ports of France to Great Britain, her trade thither passed through the Netherlands and Holland. When the Netherlands were overrun, Amsterdam monopolized the traffic. With the fall of Holland, it passed away to Bremen and Hamburg. The latter port, being farther east and more remote from the French armies, naturally drew the greater part and became the real heir of Amsterdam. [332 - Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 463.] It was the emporium of Northern Germany, through which poured the colonial produce of the world and the manufactures of the British Islands, and from which they were distributed over the Continent. The enormous subsidies paid by the United Kingdom to Germany found their way back, in part at least, by the increased purchasing power of the belligerent countries, [333 - Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 413, note.] which consumed the manufactures of Great Britain and the coffee and sugar which had passed through her ports and paid toll to her revenues. [334 - Of the imports into Germany, three fifths were foreign merchandise re-exported from Great Britain.] The shipping clearing for Hamburg from British ports, which was naught in 1793, rose to fifty-three thousand tons in 1795; and in 1798, the year during which the new French law operated, increased to seventy-four thousand. But, while Hamburg was the great centre, all the northern German ports shared the same prosperity. After Prussia retired from the war against France, in April, 1795, a neutral North German territory was established, behind a line agreed upon between the two countries. The total tonnage entering the ports of this region increased from one hundred and twenty thousand in 1792 to two hundred and six thousand in 1795; and in 1798 reached three hundred and three thousand. The value of merchandise imported rose from £2,200,000 in 1792, to £8,300,000 in 1795, £11,000,000 in 1798, and £13,500,000 in 1800. [335 - These figures are all taken from Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv.]

A similar elasticity was shown by British trade throughout the world. Only in the Mediterranean was there a marked decrease both of exports and imports,—a loss partly filled by the enterprise of American merchants; [336 - See Am. State Papers, vol. x. p. 487.] but only partly, for the Barbary pirates seconded the sweeping French decrees in excluding neutrals from that sea. But it was in the West Indies, together with the German ports, that the commercial activity of Great Britain found its greatest resources; and in the steady support contributed by that region to her financial stability is to be found the justification of the much derided policy of Pitt in capturing sugar islands. Alike as valuable pieces of property, as possessions to be exchanged when framing a treaty, and as bases for cruisers, which not merely seized upon British shipping but disturbed the commercial development of the whole region, each hostile island should at once have been seized by Great Britain. In a contest between equal navies for the control of the sea, to waste military effort upon the capture of small islands, as the French did in 1778, is a preposterous misdirection of effort; but when one navy is overwhelmingly preponderant, as the British was after 1794, when the enemy confines himself to commerce-destroying by crowds of small privateers, then the true military policy is to stamp out the nests where they swarm. If, by so doing, control is also gained of a rich commercial region, as the Caribbean Sea then was, the action is doubly justified. The produce of the West Indies, as of the East, figured doubly in the returns of British commerce,—as imports, and as re-exported to the Continent.[337 - The importance of the West India region to the commercial system of Great Britain in the last decade of the 18th century will be seen from the following table, showing the distribution per cent of British trade in 1792 and 1800:—The significance of these figures lies not only in the amounts set down directly to the West Indies, but also in the great increase of exports to Germany, and the high rate maintained to France, Belgium, and Holland, with which war existed. Of these exports 25 per cent in 1792, and 43 per cent in 1800, were foreign merchandise, chiefly West Indian—re-exported.] Each captured island contributed to swell the revenues by which the war was maintained. [338 - In 1800 the captured islands sent 9 per cent of the British imports.] The disappearance of the merchant fleets of France, Spain, and Holland, the ruin of San Domingo, and the general disorganization of such French islands as were not taken, threw the greater part of the production of tropical articles into British hands; and the practice of the day, which confined its transport to British ships, helped to support the shipping interest also in the strain brought upon it by the war. The Americans alone could compete in the continental market as carriers of such produce. Debarred from going with it direct to Europe by the Rule of 1756, the rise in price, due to the diminished production and decrease of transport just mentioned, allowed them to take the sugar and coffee of the colonies at war with England to American ports, reship it to the Continent, and yet make a good profit on the transaction. As the British colonists were in full possession of the home market, and their produce commanded high prices, the outcry which caused so much trouble ten years later was not now raised. On the contrary, their prosperous condition facilitated the British orders of January, 1798, exempting from capture Danes, Swedes, and other neutral ships, when carrying coffee and sugar of hostile origin to their own country, or to England.

It was against this great system of trade that the law of Nivôse 29 was launched. British manufactured goods, rather than British gold and silver, bought and paid for the produce of the East and West Indies, for that of the United States and of the Levant. The Continent consumed the manufactures of Great Britain, the sugar and coffee of her colonies, and obtained through British merchants the spices and wares of the East; for all which it for the most part paid back specie. The United States took specie from France herself for the colonial produce carried there in its vessels, and with it paid Great Britain for her manufactures. France herself received British goods through continental channels, and paid hard cash for them. The money thus coming to London had flowed back as subsidies to the armies of the coalitions. Now, thanks to Bonaparte, Great Britain stood alone. The French navy was powerless to contend with her fleets; but, by actual possession or by treaty, the Directory had excluded her ships from a great part of the Continent. Nevertheless, British goods abounded in all parts through the complicity of neutral carriers. If these could be stopped, the market for British manufactures would be closed; therefore against them were launched the cruisers of France, with the authority of the decree to capture any one of them found with a bale or box of British origin on board. The result was curious.

After the lapse of a year, on the 13th of January, 1799, the Directory addressed a message to the lower house of the Legislature [339 - Moniteur, An vii. pp 478, 482.] on the subject of maritime prizes, in which occurred the celebrated avowal, already quoted, that not a single merchant ship under French colors sailed the deep seas. But this was not all. The irregularities and outrages of privateers had so terrified neutrals that there had been an immense diminution in the entries of neutral tonnage, although Great Britain had rather relaxed than increased the severe rules she had adopted early in the war. In consequence of the smaller importations from abroad, there were necessarily smaller sales of French goods, and the decrease of neutral carriers impeded the export of agricultural produce and manufactures, as well as the importation of raw materials essential to the latter. The Directory attributed the evil to an existing ordinance, which left the final determination of prize cases in the hands of the courts, instead of attributing it to the executive. It argued that if there were a right of final appeal to the latter, it could check the arbitrary proceedings of the cruisers and the erroneous decisions of the judges. If, as was represented by the American consulate at Paris, the courts of first instance were chiefly composed of merchants in the sea-ports, most of whom were, directly or indirectly, interested in fitting out privateers, [340 - Am. State Papers, vol. ii. p. 8.] there was certainly need of some change in the existing legislation. In the Conseil des Anciens, however, a different view prevailed. On the 17th of January, 1799, a debate began in that body, on a resolution fixing the date when the law of January 18, 1798, became operative. [341 - Moniteur, An vii. p. 502.] The consequent discussion took a wide range over the policy and results of the enactment, as shown by the year it had been in force. The disastrous commercial condition of France was freely admitted on all sides; but in several powerful speeches it was attributed directly and convincingly to the working of the law itself. "Neutrals repelled from our ports; our agricultural products without any outlet abroad; our industry and commerce annihilated; our colonies helpless; our shipping ways deserted; a balance of twenty thousand sailors in English prisons; our ships of war without seamen,—such are the political effects of the law which is ruining, crushing us." [342 - Ibid., p. 716; Couzard's speech.]

In less impassioned words, other deputies showed the unfairness of the law. If, on the land frontier, a wagon was stopped carrying a bale of British goods, the bale was confiscated, but the rest of the load escaped. If in a ship a like bale was found, not only it, but all the rest of the cargo and the ship itself were condemned. Even in the fiercest heat of the Revolution and the utmost danger to the country, it had never been attempted, as now, to forbid neutrals carrying British goods to their own country. [343 - Moniteur, An vii. p. 555; Dentzel's speech.] The step could not be justified under the plea of reprisals; for "if the English have seized French goods on these same neutrals, they have not confiscated the rest of the cargo. These are, therefore, not reprisals, but new proceedings on our part, which neutrals could neither expect nor guard against." [344 - Ibid.; Lenglet's speech.] A neutral ship came within reach of the French coast only at her extreme peril. A small package of British goods would justify her capture by a French privateer, whatever her destination; nay, even if she were bringing to France articles urgently needed, and intended to take away French produce in exchange for them. Neutrals, allies, even French vessels themselves, carrying on the little trade with neighboring states, were preyed on by French corsairs. This condition reacted on the enterprise of the cruisers themselves. It was much safer, and quite as profitable, to keep close to the home coast and board passing vessels. The merest trifle, smuggled on board by one of the crew, or shipped unknown to the master and owner, made them good prize. Owing to this caution, the captures brought into French home ports had dropped, from six hundred and sixty-two in the previous year, to four hundred and fifty-two, notwithstanding the vast extension of the field for seizures. [345 - Ibid., pp. 582, 583. The figures are chiefly taken from the speech of M. Arnould. A person of the same name, who was Chef du Bureau du Commerce, published in 1797 a book called "Système Maritime et Politique des Européens," containing much detailed information about French maritime affairs, and displaying bitter hatred of England. If the deputy himself was not the author, he doubtless had access to the best official intelligence.]

The loss of prizes, however, was far from being the worst effect of the law. Neutrals being repelled, friendly and French shipping scared away, commerce had been seriously crippled for want of carriage. In the year before the enactment the coasting trade employed 895,000 tons; of which 120,000 were neutrals, by whom goods were transported from one sea frontier of France to another, as from the Bay of Biscay to the French Mediterranean coast. In the year following, the total fell to 746,000; but the neutrals dropped to 38,000. In the foreign trade 860,000 tons were employed in the year before the law, of which 623,000 were neutral. In the year following, the total fell to 688,000, of which 468,000 were neutrals. There thus resulted a total loss of 322,000 tons in a commerce of only 1,750,000. To this the speaker added a striking comparison: "In the same year in which we lost 322,000 tons by the operation of the law, we took four hundred and fifty-two prizes. Assuming—what is not the case—that these were all English, and that they averaged two hundred tons burden—an excessive allowance—we have taken from our enemy 90,400 tons against 322,000 we have lost." "All the sufferings of ourselves and allies might be borne, if good resulted to ourselves or harm to England; but it has not." "English ships are insured at a premium of five per cent, while neutrals bound to France have to pay twenty to thirty per cent. Neutrals themselves seek English convoy. [346 - In consequence of the law of Jan. 18, 1798, the British government appointed a ship-of-the-line and two frigates to convoy a fleet of American vessels to their own coast.—Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. p. 440.] French merchants would gladly charter neutral ships to carry to San Domingo the produce that is overflowing our storehouses, and to bring back the coffee and sugar for which we are paying such extravagant rates; but they will not come near us. So, instead of paying a moderate price with French goods, we are paying exorbitant rates in specie, which goes straight to England, our most cruel foe." [347 - Moniteur, An vii. p. 564; Cornet's speech.] The policy of the law was condemned by the results. In support of its justice, it was alleged that there were at sea only French and British ships, whence it followed that all which were not French could be seized,—a contention which derives its sole present interest from being the same as that put forth by Napoleon ten years later. It shows again—what can scarcely be too often asserted in the interests of truth—that the emperor was but the full and perfect incarnation of the spirit that animated the Convention and the Directory.

The Government of the United States had not yet, in 1798, passed into the hands of men with an undue "passion for peace." Upon the unceremonious dismissal of Mr. Pinckney, not for personal objections but as rejecting any minister from America, the President had called a special meeting of Congress in May, 1797, and recommended an increase of the naval establishment. When the news of the law of January 18, 1798, reached the United States, Congress was in session. On the 28th of May an act was approved, authorizing the capture of any French armed vessel which shall, upon the coast of the United States, have committed any depredation upon her commerce. [348 - Annals of Congress, 1798, p. 3733.] On the 7th of July another act abrogated all existing treaties between the two countries; [349 - Ibid., p. 3754.] and on the 9th was decreed the seizure of French armed vessels anywhere on the high seas, not only by public armed ships, but by privateers, which the President was authorized to commission. [350 - Ibid.] Thereupon followed a period of maritime hostilities, though without a formal declaration of war, which lasted three years; the first prize being taken from the French in June, 1798, and peace being restored by a treaty, signed in Paris September 30, 1800, and ratified the following February. The small force of the United States was principally occupied in the West Indies, protecting their trade,—both by the patrol system directed against the enemy's cruisers, and by convoying bodies of merchantmen to and from the islands. As the condition of the French navy did not allow keeping large fleets afloat, the ships of the United States, though generally small, were able to hold their ground, capture many of the enemy, and preserve their own commerce from molestation. The mercantile shipping of France, however, had already been so entirely destroyed by Great Britain, that she suffered far more from the cessation of the carrying trade, which Americans had maintained for her, than from the attacks of the American navy.

The year 1798, which opened with the unlucky law of January 18, was in all respects unfortunate for France. In May Bonaparte sailed for Egypt, the country thus parting with its ablest general, with thirty-two thousand of its best troops, and its only available fleet, of thirteen sail-of-the-line, which the government with the utmost difficulty had been able to equip. On the first of August Nelson destroyed the fleet in the Battle of the Nile; and the British navy, forced to leave the Mediterranean in 1796, again asserted its preponderance throughout the whole of that sea, opposing an effectual barrier to the return of the army in Egypt. The entire face of affairs changed, not only in the East but in Europe. The Porte, at first hesitating, declared openly against France. A second coalition was formed between Great Britain, Austria, and Russia, to which Naples acceded; and the armies of the latter entered upon their campaign in November. They were, indeed, quickly overthrown; but the very march of the French troops against them left the armies in northern Italy hopelessly inferior to their opponents. The year 1799 was full of reverses. In Germany and in Italy the French were steadily driven back; in Switzerland only did they, under Masséna, hold their ground. The British indeed were repelled in their attack upon Holland, but they carried away with them the Dutch navy. A Russo-Turkish fleet, entering the Mediterranean, retook the Ionian Islands from the French; and Admiral Bruix escaped from Brest only to find it impossible to achieve any substantial results in the face of the British superiority on the sea. In the midst of this confusion and disaster, and amid the commercial and internal distress caused by the maritime legislation, Bonaparte returned. Landing on the 9th of October, he on the 9th of November overthrew the Directory. Preparations for war were at once begun, and the successes of the first consul in Italy and of Moreau in Germany, in 1800, combined with the defection of the czar from the coalition, restored peace to the Continent and internal quiet to France.