CHAPTER VII.

Great Britain, A.D. 1792—War with France, Feb. 1, 1793—Commercial panic—Government lends assistance—High price of corn—Bounties granted on its importation—Declaration of Russia, 1780—Confederacy renewed when Bonaparte had risen to power—Capture of merchant vessels—Do “free ships make free goods?”—Neutral nations repudiate the English views—Their views respecting blockades—Right of search—Chief doctrines of the neutrals—Mr. Pitt stands firm, and is supported by Mr. Fox—Defence of the English principles—Nelson sent to the Sound, 1801—Bombardment of Copenhagen—Peace of Amiens, and its terms—Bonaparte’s opinion of free trade—Sequestration of English property in France not raised—All claims remain unanswered—Restraint on commerce—French spies sent to England to examine her ports, &c.—Aggrandisement of Bonaparte—Irritation in England—Bonaparte’s interview with Lord Whitworth—The English ministers try to gain time—Excitement in England—The King’s message—The invasion of England determined on—War declared, May 18, 1803—Joy of the shipowners—Preparations in England for defence—Captures of French merchantmen—Effect of the war on shipping—Complaints of English shipowners—Hardships of the pressing system—Apprentices—Suggestions to secure the Mediterranean trade, and to encourage emigration to Canada—Value of the Canadian trade.

Notwithstanding numerous predictions that the merchant shipping of Great Britain would be, to a great extent, supplanted by her now formidable rivals on the other side of the Atlantic, England possessed, in 1792, six hundred thousand tons of shipping, more than she had at the commencement of the American war, while at the same time her exports had risen to 5,457,733l.; and when the great war with France broke out, early in 1793, she owned 16,079 merchant vessels of 1,540,145 tons, under the management of 118,286 seamen.[238]

Yet though comparatively ready for war, its actual declaration caused a serious monetary convulsion, nor have we any record of so many commercial failures on the declaration of any previous war. The struggle for the retention of the American colonies had produced, as war invariably does, numerous evils; and the South Sea Bubble, many years earlier, had spread general ruin among those of her trading community who had rushed wildly into the field of speculation; but now commercial houses of the highest standing gave way under the shock. Indeed the sufferings of the people became so intense that Parliament, after much discussion, resolved to issue 5,000,000l. of exchequer bills as a temporary loan to such of the merchants of London, Bristol, Hull, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Leith as could furnish property equal to double the extent of the loan they requested. The announcement of the intention of the government to support the mercantile interests went so far towards dispelling the wide-prevailing alarm, that the entire amount applied for did not, after all, exceed 3,855,624l.; and in spite of this panic and of the calamities of war, English merchant shipping continued to prosper. Indeed war generally offers a large remunerative employment to her shipowners; moreover, in this instance, the dread of famine served to increase the demand for ships, and thereby enhanced their prosperity.

As the winter of 1794-95 set in remarkably early, and proved to be of extraordinary length and severity, many apprehensions were entertained that the growing crops might suffer also. Nor were these fears groundless; the price of wheat, which was 55s. 7d. on the 1st of January, 1795, rose to 77s. 2d. on the 1st of July, and to no less than 108s. 4d. per quarter in August of the same year. Government had, early in 1795,[239] noticed with considerable anxiety the indications of impending dearth. To check or modify these extraordinary prices all neutral corn vessels bound to France were brought into English ports, their cargoes being, however, paid for with a very ample margin of profit to the owners.

Various remedies were proposed to counteract the evils of such high prices, and Parliament ultimately enacted that a bounty of from 16s. to 20s. per quarter (according to the quality of the corn), and of 6s. per barrel on flour from the south of Europe, should be paid till the quantity in store amounted to four hundred thousand quarters. This law was to be in force till the 30th of September, 1796. Indeed such was the state of alarm at the probable scarcity of food that the members of both Houses of Parliament bound themselves[240] to reduce the consumption of bread in their houses by one third, and to recommend, as far as possible, a similar reduction in the daily food of their friends and neighbours. By great exertions eight hundred thousand quarters of foreign wheat were brought into the kingdom during 1796; but even this extra quantity would have been insufficient to meet the wants of the people had not an abundant harvest at home during that year happily restored the balance of supply and demand, so that prices once more declined to their ordinary range.

But though saved from the calamities of famine at home, England had still to contend against the leading European powers. In 1780 Russia, roused from the lethargy of ages by an unusually energetic monarch, made great efforts to extend her power and commerce, not without a manifest desire to grasp as much as she could of that more justly belonging to other nations. With this view the Empress Catherine issued her famous “Declaration to the Courts of St. James, Versailles, and Madrid,” which is well worthy of consideration. In this celebrated document, which however remained for some years in abeyance, the Empress asserted that she had “fully manifested her sentiments of moderation, and, further, that she had supported against the Ottoman Empire the rights of neutrality and the liberty of universal commerce.” She also expressed her surprise that her subjects were not permitted “peaceably to enjoy the fruits of their industry, and the rights belonging to a neutral nation;” and as she considered these principles to be coincident with the primitive law of nations which every people may claim, and even the belligerent powers cannot invalidate without violating the laws of neutrality, she had declared:—

1. That all neutral ships may freely navigate from port to port and along the coasts of nations at war.

2. That effects belonging to the subjects of the said warring powers shall be free in all neutral vessels, not carrying goods contraband of war.

3. That all such merchandise be included as is mentioned in the 10th and 11th articles of her treaty of commerce with Great Britain, and similar obligations extended to all the powers at war.

4. That a blockaded port means one so well watched by the ships of the attacking power, that it is dangerous either to enter or leave it.[241]

Such were the principles then hurled at England by Catherine of Russia, who placed herself at the head of an armed neutrality, consisting of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. Lord North, for a while, evaded any direct reply to them; but the northern powers naturally found zealous supporters in the nations now at war with Great Britain. Thus the contemporary declarations of France, Spain, and the United States lauded the moderation and public spirit which Catherine had displayed, while England maintained her principles inviolate. But it was only at the close of the century that the northern confederacy attempted to enforce their principles. Bonaparte had then concluded peace with Germany and Naples, had compelled Spain to coerce the Portuguese so as to destroy all English trade on the coast of Portugal, and had stimulated the action of the northern powers, by inspiring the Emperor Paul with an infatuation which could only succeed in men of weak minds like himself. The avowed aim of Bonaparte was to close every port in Europe against the merchant shipping of England, to combine the naval forces of Spain, Holland and France so as to make them act in concert, and, thus, if possible, to rescue the army he had left in Egypt.

England’s position had already become sufficiently perilous, owing to the order of the National Convention of France, issued in May 1793, to their ships of war and privateers not to respect British property in neutral vessels—an exception, however, being promptly made in favour of American vessels: a resolution which continued in force till the seizure by the English of the fleet of United States vessels, laden with provisions for France, forced the Convention to rescind their order.

American vessels thus became liable to capture on both sides, and continued so till the French government, hearing that Mr. Jay had been sent to London to remonstrate against the capture by English cruisers of American vessels, renewed the order in favour of the United States’ ships. When, however, the National Convention found that Mr. Jay’s remonstrances, so far from producing the effect anticipated, had led to the conclusion of a treaty of amity and commerce between the two countries adverse to France, they again decreed that their conduct to neutral flags would be regulated by that of their enemies. The French did not conceal their displeasure against the Americans, whom they accused of base ingratitude; although it was evident to the whole world that the assistance France had previously rendered to the revolted colonists was simply prompted by a desire to check the power of England, and not from any real sympathy with the American cause.

In this instance the enforcement of the paper treaties pre-existing between France and America threatened a rupture between the two countries. The French ambassador to the United States presented a remonstrance in September 1795 wherein he insisted upon the mutual duties of neutrality. Not having received any answer, he made further applications in the ensuing year, which were equally disregarded. In his last note (27th of October, 1796) he observed, “that neutrality no longer exists when, in the course of war, the neutral nation grants to one of the belligerent powers advantages not stipulated by treaties anterior to the war, or suffers that power to seize upon them.” Mr. Pickering, the United States Secretary of State, replied (3rd of November, 1796), that by the treaty of 1778 with France it was expressly stipulated that free ships should make free goods;[242] that the Americans, being now at peace, have the right of carrying the property of the enemies of France; and that the French could not expect them to renounce that privilege because it happened to operate to the disadvantage of one of the parties engaged in the war. He maintained that the captures made by the British of American vessels having French property on board were warranted by the law of nations; that the operation of this law was contemplated by France and the United States when they formed their treaty of commerce, and that their special stipulation on this point was meant as an exception to an universal rule.[243] The Americans, moreover, saw the advantage of preserving amicable commercial relations with Great Britain, and this “perfidious condescension,” as the French stigmatised it, “to the tyrannical and homicidal rage of the English government concurred to plunge the people of France into the horrors of famine.”[244] This violent correspondence thus threatened to embroil France and the United States, and in about three weeks afterwards (15th of November, 1796) M. Adet, the French Minister at Philadelphia, gave notice that his diplomatic functions were suspended, and, at the same time, the Directory of France refused to receive Mr. Pinckney, the accredited ambassador from the United States.

It was at this period, while French armies, under the generals of the Republic, were pursuing their victorious career by land, that England, on her natural element, the sea, sought to secure a compensating balance by the monopoly of the carrying trade of the world. Desperate measures were considered necessary to counteract the sweeping conquests of the French and to save herself from what then appeared to be impending annihilation. In 1794 and 1795 the conquest of Belgium and Holland had been achieved by the arms of France; and in the following year Napoleon began his victorious campaign in Italy, his first battle having been gained at Montenotte on the 11th of April, 1796.[245]

But while the French were triumphant by land, the English soon became equally predominant on the ocean. Their fleets swept the seas of all their enemies. Through their vigilance, and the indomitable courage of their crews, the merchant vessels of England had never in any former war been so thoroughly protected. The premium of insurance which had, in 1782, been fifteen guineas per cent. on those of her ships engaged in the trade with India and China, did not exceed half that rate at any period between the spring of 1793 and the close of this terrible struggle. Nelson and his brave fellow-commanders were the only, but they were a complete, barrier to Napoleon’s conquests. The fleets of France were either destroyed or shut up in her ports, and, to use Napoleon’s own expression, he could not send a cockle boat to sea without the risk of its being captured. The loyalty and courage of the English nation had, amid all their sufferings, risen with the emergency. In Mr. Pitt the merchants, shipowners, and agriculturists had found a most able and truly loyal, though a cold, proud, disdainful champion; his extraordinary administrative talents and unswerving love of his country rendering him the idol of the mercantile and shipping classes. But though he had weathered the storm during seventeen years, he now felt it prudent to withdraw for a while from office; his retirement being, no doubt, greatly induced by the differences between him and the King respecting Catholic Emancipation. His influence, however, and the policy he had unflinchingly pursued, continued to guide the councils of the Addington administration which succeeded him.

It was then that the question of neutral rights, originally promulgated by Catherine of Russia in 1780, first seriously attracted the attention of those nations of Europe who were not directly involved in the war, and especially of the United States of America, now fast becoming a power of no mean importance, and one, even then, prepared to assert her rights. These powers indignantly repudiated the claims which England, under Pitt, had enforced. They alleged that the accidents of war ought not to interfere with the trade of those not engaged in it; and that they were justified in possessing themselves of such carrying trade as the belligerents had been obliged to relinquish. Holding these views, they claimed the right of frequenting freely all the ports of the world, and of passing to and fro between those of the belligerent nations; thus traversing from France and Spain to England, from England to Spain and France, and (what was still more disputable) of going from the colonies to the mother-countries, as for instance, from Mexico to Spain. They resolutely maintained the principle that “the flag covers the merchandise;” that the flag of neutrals sheltered from search the merchandise transported in their vessels; that in such vessels French merchandise could not be seized by the English, nor English merchandise by the French; in short, that the ships of neutrals were as sacred as the soil of the country to which they belonged. On the other hand, they admitted that they ought not to carry goods unquestionably contraband of war, it being incompatible with any notion of neutrality that the neutral should supply one of the belligerent nations with arms against the other. They, however, sought to limit their admission solely to articles fabricated for war, such as muskets, cannon, powder, projectiles, and materials for accoutrements of every kind; nor did they consider provisions interdicted, except such as were prepared for military and naval armaments, as, for example, biscuits.

They made a second admission as to the ports which might be entered, but only on the express condition that these should be accurately defined; and, further, that it could be shown that such ports were bonâ fide blockaded by a naval force capable of laying siege to them, or of reducing them to famine. In such cases they allowed that running the blockade was an attempt to thwart one of the belligerents in the exercise of its legitimate right, while at the same time it afforded succour to one of the powers against the other. They insisted further, that the blockade should be preceded by formal declarations, that it should not be a mere paper blockade, and that it should be carried out by a force that it would be impossible to pass through without great danger.

Lastly, as it was necessary to ascertain whether a vessel really belonged to the nation whose flag she hoisted, and whether she had, or had not, on board goods contraband of war, the neutrals admitted the right of search if carried out with certain courtesies to be agreed upon, and if rigorously observed. Above all, they insisted that merchant vessels, regularly convoyed by a ship of war, should not be exposed to search, the naval, or royal flag, in their opinion, enjoying the privilege of being at once believed when it was affirmed, upon the honour of its nation, that the vessels so convoyed were of its own nation, and were not carrying interdicted articles.[246]

The doctrines asserted by the neutrals being similar in most respects to the declaration issued by Catherine of Russia, are therefore reducible to four principal points: (1) The flag covers the merchandise, that is to say, no neutral ship is to be searched for an enemy’s goods. (2) No merchandise is to be interdicted except contraband of war. This contraband to be confined solely to articles made for the use of armies or navies, corn and naval stores not being included under this head. (3) Access not to be interdicted to any port unless it is bonâ fide blockaded. (4) No ships under regular convoy to be subjected to search. Such were the principles maintained by France, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and the United States of America: they were, however, but loosely observed when their own interests were involved.

Notwithstanding this mighty confederacy, leagued together to overthrow the maritime supremacy of Great Britain, Mr. Pitt stood forward as the undaunted champion of her shipping interests, and asked the House of Commons whether they would tamely suffer the country to be borne down by the hostility of the northern powers, or “would submissively allow those powers to abuse and kick it out of its rights?” He declared that the four northern nations had leagued together to produce a code of maritime laws in defiance of the established law of nations, at the same time strenuously denying that “free bottoms make free goods,” an opinion in which he was supported by Mr. Fox.

England accordingly insisted upon seizing enemy’s merchandise wherever it could be found, maintaining the principle that contraband of war included naval and military stores, indeed everything which could give succour to an enemy; and, though she admitted that ports ought to be considered in a state of blockade only when it was unsafe to enter them, she repudiated utterly the pretended right claimed by the neutral powers, that no vessel under convoy could be searched. “If,” exclaimed Mr. Pitt, “we subscribe to the doctrines laid down by the neutral powers, a small armed sloop would suffice to convoy the trade of the whole world. England would lose her own trade, and could not take any steps against the trade of her enemies. She could no longer prevent Spain from receiving the precious metals of the New World, nor preclude France from obtaining the naval munitions of war supplied by the North. Rather than thus sacrifice our naval greatness at the shrine of Russia, it were better to envelop ourselves in our own flag, and proudly find our grave in the deep, than admit the validity of such principles in the maritime code of civilised nations.”[247]

Although Mr. Pitt had retired about ten days from office when he delivered those opinions, his successors made prodigious efforts to maintain the policy he had so long pursued. Nelson, who had already gained immortal fame by the battle of the Nile (August 1st, 1798), was despatched, second in command to Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, to the Sound, with the double object of overawing Denmark and of preventing the junction of the fleets of the coalitionists. The details of Nelson’s extraordinary exploit are too well known to be here recapitulated. Practically assuming the chief command, he, amid the difficult navigation of the shoals which protect Copenhagen, bombarded the three Crown batteries of the Danes (April 2nd, 1801), attacked their fleet with signal success, and, when their determined resistance placed his squadron in the extremity of danger, and Admiral Sir Hyde Parker made the signal to discontinue the action, placing the glass to his blind eye, he exclaimed, “I really do not see Parker’s signal for leaving off action.”

After a terrible bombardment the Danes, who had suffered most severely, allowed their fire to slacken, and at length to cease. The captured vessels would not, however, yield up possession, so that an irregular firing was still partially kept up; and, in spite of their heavy losses, the Danes declined to withdraw from the confederacy of the neutral powers, or to open their ports to English merchant shipping, until that great confederacy[248] was broken up by the death of Paul I. of Russia. When his successor, Alexander I., ascended the throne, the 24th of March, 1801, his first step was to remove the embargo on merchant shipping, which had been so unjustifiably imposed by his predecessor; he had, indeed, no desire to wage a war of principles against France, and still less against England. The effects of this wise policy were soon apparent throughout Europe. England at once made peace with Russia[249] and the northern powers, and secretly entered into negotiations for the settlement of preliminaries of peace with France.

Both nations were indeed by this time anxious for peace, Napoleon having in view the consolidation of his own personal power, while the English ministry sought repose for the country after a ten years’ war; and the people themselves were equally anxious with their rulers that war should cease. By the treaty it was agreed that England should restore to France, and to the other powers of Europe, all the maritime conquests she had made, with the exception of those parts of India which she had definitively acquired, embracing Ceylon, captured from the Dutch, and Trinidad, wrested from the Spaniards. She proposed, however, to restore the Cape of Good Hope, Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo and Surinam to the Dutch; Martinique to the French; Minorca to the Spaniards; and to assign Malta to the still surviving members of the order of St. John of Jerusalem. England also evacuated Porto Ferrajo, which, with the island of Elba, was to be given back to the French. As an equivalent, the French were to evacuate the territory of Naples, that is, the gulf of Otranto, and Egypt, which France has ever been anxious to obtain, was restored to the Porte.

The preliminaries of this important treaty were signed on the night of the 1st of October, and a courier was despatched to Paris, with a view to make the public announcement simultaneously to the people on both sides of the Channel. The public joy both in France and England was of the most exciting character, as the negotiations, which had been carried on during nine months, had been kept profoundly secret up to the last moment. Napoleon and his colleagues, the other two consuls, Cambacérès and Lebrun, received the news at a cabinet council, and they embraced each other with undisguised delight. In this moment of satisfaction Cambacérès remarked, “Now that we have made peace with England, we have only to conclude a treaty of commerce, and all cause for future dissension between the two countries will be removed.”

“Not quite so fast,” rejoined the First Consul, with some energy. “A political peace is concluded; so much the better, let us enjoy it. As regards a commercial peace, we will make one if we can. But I will not on any consideration whatever sacrifice French industry. I remember the distress of 1786.”[250]

Treaties of peace were now formed between all the nations of the continent, and peace caused deeper public emotion in all ranks of people throughout Europe than perhaps any event which had happened for many centuries.

But this peace, in which so many millions of people rejoiced, was of short duration. Having by the treaties of Luneville and Amiens[251] raised himself and France to the highest power and influence in Europe, Napoleon had now constituted himself consul for life; had restored the national religion to France, established tranquillity and good government in all the departments of the state, reorganised the finances, previously in a deplorable confusion; and had finally, with Prussia, secularised the ecclesiastical states of Germany, mediatised a number of smaller German princes, and parcelled out a large portion of Europe in the most arbitrary, though in some respects judicious manner. In a word, he had raised himself and France to the highest pitch of political influence, and only wanted the name of emperor, which in a year or two afterwards he assumed to be, in every sense the most powerful potentate in Europe. The world was dazzled with a success which, until that period, had been combined with many acts of profound wisdom. But this remarkable man, who could so well govern the unquiet spirit of France, could not govern himself—

Ere long his rage for power and distinction again involved all Europe in one of the most sanguinary wars recorded in the history of the world, a war which only terminated after the final struggle at Waterloo, and in the exile for ever of the Emperor from the scene of his glory.

By the fourteenth article of the treaty of Amiens it was provided that all sequestrations[252] imposed in France and England on the property of their respective subjects during the war should be abolished, on the ratification of the peace; and, acting in the spirit of good faith, the English government, to prove their desire of living on terms of amicable intercourse with France, at once and punctually performed their part of this agreement. Indeed as early as the 25th of May, 1802, Mr. Merry, the English diplomatic agent at Paris, notified to the French minister that His Majesty had, in conformity with this article, taken off the sequestration on the property of all French citizens in his dominions, at the same time adding his belief that the French government would perform the same act of justice towards such Englishmen as might have property in France. The reasonable request contained in the latter part of this notification was urged more than once by Mr. Merry, but Lord Whitworth’s despatch from Paris to Lord Hawkesbury, dated the 10th of May, 1803, explains with how little success these applications were entertained by the French government. “With regard,” said his lordship, “to the numerous memorials and representations which I have had to make to this government in behalf of those of His Majesty’s subjects who have suffered by the detention and confiscation of their vessels and property in French ports, I have only to observe that they have, with one or two exceptions, remained unanswered.” Under circumstances so studiously insulting, the British government, to the surprise of its own people, persisted in a pacific, if not submissive, demeanour. Instead of resenting such conduct, the English ministers were content with making new efforts at conciliation. They removed all the prohibitions on French trade imposed during the war, placing her shipping in all respects on the same footing as the vessels of other states in amity with Great Britain, a course involving much injustice to many British subjects whose interests were thus postponed to the paramount exigencies of state necessity.

As every step of the First Consul indicated a desire to embarrass English commerce, it was impossible that friendly relations could be long maintained between France and England. Under the pretext of a renewal of arrangements formerly subsisting between the two countries, Napoleon despatched to England a number of agents whose ostensible occupation was to watch over the interests of French trade and navigation, their real business and most important commission being to make inquiries into the commercial value of each port; the course of exchange; the state of the neighbouring manufactures and fairs; together with every detail necessary for establishing a rivalry in trade. These in themselves were legitimate and perhaps not unfriendly objects, but each agent was further required “to furnish a plan of the ports of his district,” with “a specification of the soundings for mooring vessels.” If no plan could be procured, then he was enjoined to point out, “with what wind vessels could come in and go out, and what was the greatest draught of water with which they could enter therein deeply laden.”

From the earliest moment of his assumption of power Napoleon had conceived the idea that England, “a mere nation of shopkeepers,” could be most effectually injured by directing his hostility against her trade, and certain it is that, with unintermitting pertinacity, he tried to carry out this design. It happened, however, that military men and engineers were selected to act as “commercial agents,” the two most able and active of whom having actually commenced their duties in Guernsey and Dublin, while others arrived in London to receive final instructions from leaders who had been recognised by Lord Hawkesbury, the English Commissary-general of the commercial relations with the French republic in London. The English government could hardly fail to notice these suspicious circumstances, revealing as they did but too plainly the object of these pseudo-commercial agents. Lord Hawkesbury consequently made a verbal representation to the French ambassador of the facts; but his reply was so flimsy and unsatisfactory, that the French agents were detained in London, with a further intimation that if they left it they would at once receive orders to quit the country.

It is unnecessary to recapitulate at length the various acts by which Bonaparte, during a presumed period of peace, endeavoured to aggrandise his power. Suffice it to say that he despatched an enormous military force to the island of San Domingo with a view of placing the colonial power of France in the West Indies on a level with that of Great Britain: an expedition which, however, proved most disastrous, many thousands of his soldiers finding their graves in a climate singularly dangerous to European constitutions.[253] But when Bonaparte sent Ney with thirty thousand men “to give,” in the phraseology of the day, “a constitution” to Switzerland, the war party in England roused the entire nation to energetic action, and, though the public language of ministers still breathed a spirit of peace, it was resolved that effectual steps should be taken to curb Napoleon’s further progress.

Italy, Holland, and Liguria (as the Genoese republic was called at that time) had fallen under his iron rule. Spain he had likewise overawed, while exercising a predominating influence over Austria, whose power he had humbled; and, in the opinion of the French people, the insular position of England alone “prevented her from being absorbed into a French province,” thus sinking beneath the domineering power of the French Dictator. The very thought of such humiliating conditions was totally incompatible with the independent spirit of Englishmen. The newspaper press, though at that time swayed by a spirit of party, yet still free, sounded the alarm, and attacked the ruler of France with an undaunted spirit, which Bonaparte could not endure. He lost all temper when complaining of the unmistakable opinions expressed of his conduct and intentions by the English press; though the too complaisant English ministers prosecuted the offending parties.[254] In the midst of this excitement the question of the surrender of Malta arose, only to intensify the suspicions of the English people, the more so as Bonaparte was making prodigious preparations of a military and naval character in Holland.

Although Talleyrand on the 18th of February, 1803, in a conference, told Lord Whitworth that Sebastiani’s mission was “purely commercial,” his lordship on the same day received a message from the First Consul, appointing a personal interview to be held at the Tuileries three days afterwards, which revealed a very different state of things. This celebrated interview, which lasted two hours, had been previously carefully rehearsed by Bonaparte, with the idea of either deceiving or intimidating England. “Every wind which blows from England,” exclaimed the petulant ruler of France, as he stood at one end of his table with Lord Whitworth at the other, “is charged with hatred and outrage;” and in this strain he harangued the ambassador throughout, inveighing with bitterness against England, though drawing the veil carefully to conceal his own acts of territorial ambition; and, in the midst of his tirades, throwing out broad hints that if England and France were but united they might share the whole world between them.[255] “As for Malta,” he exclaimed, after he had worked himself into a frenzy, “my mind is made up; I would rather see the English in possession of the heights of Montmartre[256] than that they should continue to hold Malta.” Lord Whitworth stared in calm, imperturbable silence at this outbreak of well-feigned passion; but, on that same evening, made his government acquainted with the extraordinary conversation to which he had listened, the most startling matter of which was the First Consul’s declaration “that Egypt must sooner or later belong to France;” and that in the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire France would take care to have her share. A few days later, conscious of the folly of his previous speech, he caused it to be notified to Lord Whitworth that “a project was in contemplation, by which the integrity of the Turkish Empire would be effectually secured,” Napoleon having evidently perceived that he had overshot his mark, and, therefore, that he must endeavour to obliterate the impression he had made on the mind of the English ambassador.

The bolt was however shot, and to retrieve his indiscretion was beyond his power. The English ministry, although they saw that war was inevitable, were desirous of protracting the issue; they, therefore, desired Lord Whitworth to state that His Majesty could not evacuate Malta till substantial security was provided for those objects which might be materially endangered by the removal of his troops. While England was firm, Bonaparte, on the other hand, as was often his habit whenever his schemes were thwarted, rashly published an extravagant paper in the Moniteur, as an exposition of the powerful state of France, and of his own glory. The whole of the past policy of France, together with his intentions, were disclosed in this ostentatious instrument. The other powers on the continent were plainly told how impossible it would be for any of them to obstruct or interfere with the prosecution of French designs; while they were reminded of the advantages to be derived from the protection of France, and of the destructive consequences of her enmity.

The public mind in England was wound up to the highest pitch of excitement by the publication, in the official Moniteur, of the “Acts of the Republic.” Nor did the love of peace, the desire of a commercial people to preserve an uninterrupted intercourse with the continent, or the dread of fresh burthens, allay their indignation. All the independent portion of the English press poured forth a ceaseless torrent of abuse of the French despot, thereby accelerating the crisis; nay, even the government journals, which had previously observed a guarded silence, now joined the chorus of national indignation. The English ministers had sent orders to the Cape of Good Hope to surrender that colony; and some of its forts had been actually given up to the Dutch government. The commander-in-chief, however, learning from England the critical state of affairs, repossessed himself with adroitness of the places given up, relanded his troops, and held possession of the settlement until counter-orders arrived.

In the meantime Bonaparte was with the utmost secresy preparing the most formidable preparations in Holland, and had already conceived and partly matured his grand design for the invasion of England. Yet even then, so completely were ministers unprepared or unconscious of his proceedings, that one of the Lords of the Admiralty said, in the course of a debate in Parliament, that only a few miserable fishing-boats existed in the Dutch ports; while, so late as the 23rd of February, the Prime Minister declared the country to be in a state of profound peace.

However, on the 8th of March, 1803, the King sent a message to the House of Commons, acquainting them that he had judged it expedient to adopt additional measures of precaution for the security of his dominions, and, only two days later, the whole of the militia of the United Kingdom were called out and embodied. The energy and spirit of the monarch obtained an enthusiastic support from all ranks of his people; and Bonaparte, not yet quite prepared, launched forth one of his manifestoes in the form of a despatch to his ambassador at the English court, in which he disclaimed having any prepared armament except one at Helvoetsluys; adding, further, that this, though destined solely for purposes of colonisation, and ready to sail, should, in consequence of the king’s message, at once be countermanded. Very soon afterwards, however, he despatched staff-officers to Holland, Cherbourg, St. Malo, Granville, and Brest, with orders to repair all the gun-boats of his former Boulogne flotilla, and to collect in every port all craft available for the transportation of troops. He further ordered the construction of a vast number of flat-bottomed boats to carry heavy guns, and made the most formidable preparations for his cherished scheme of invading England. He also made arrangements for the occupation of Hanover, Portugal, and the gulf of Otranto (Tarentum), so as to control the Mediterranean, with the view of having thus under his command the whole continent of Europe from Denmark to the Adriatic.[257] With a similar object he collected a vast force at Bayonne to march into the Peninsula, and a second army at Faenza of ten thousand men and eighty guns to fall upon Naples; while he, at the same time, relanded the troops at Helvoetsluys, which, he had declared, were destined for Louisiana, and despatched them to Flushing. All the ports of the north of France were fortified in the strongest manner, and when, a few weeks later, he formed the celebrated camp at Boulogne, war was declared on the 18th of May, 1803, after a peace of only a year and a half.[258]

The shipowners and merchants of London, after what had taken place, heard the news of the formal declaration of war with tumultuous exultation; indeed war seemed then more acceptable than peace had been eighteen months before. Nelson was appointed to take charge of the Channel fleet, and a force of volunteers was speedily embodied, sufficient to convince Bonaparte that the invasion of England was not so easy as he had anticipated, even “although all France rallied around the hero which it admired.”[259] The English government, not waiting for the formal declaration of war, seized upon all the French merchant vessels they could meet with. Indeed, the news reached Paris, just after Lord Whitworth left that capital, that two English frigates had captured in the bay of Audierne some French merchantmen which were endeavouring to get into Brest. The intelligence of other captures soon followed. There had been an agreement between France and the United States on the subject of such captures (30th of September, 1800); but, strangely enough, the treaty of Amiens was silent upon this subject; hence the English government, viewing the prodigious military preparations of Bonaparte on land, retaliated in the only way they could retaliate effectively, by claiming the supremacy of the ocean. In seizing the French merchantmen before war had been formally declared, England adhered to her invariable practice when war, though unproclaimed, existed de facto. But the ruler of France was unprepared for this blow, and, in the first impulse of his resentment, he issued a decree arresting as prisoners of war all Englishmen then travelling in France. Nor was he induced till after long solicitation to limit the action of this decree to persons holding the king’s commission.[260]

The first effect of hostilities on England’s maritime commerce and shipping seems to have been to reduce the nominal value of the cargoes exported from 41,411,966l. in 1802 to 31,438,985l. in 1803. The next effect was to introduce into the carrying trade of Great Britain an extra supply of one hundred and twelve thousand eight hundred and nineteen tons of foreign vessels, whilst the third was to lessen, by one hundred and seventy-three thousand nine hundred tons, her own mercantile shipping; so that the success which had attended the business of the shipowner during the previous war no longer accompanied him, especially during the earlier period of the renewal of hostilities, the majority of this class suffering heavy losses. The owners of neutral vessels, while enjoying many other privileges, had likewise the advantage of obtaining from the Baltic and elsewhere the materials necessary for the construction of their vessels, at less cost than the British shipowners. The English government also levied a heavy tax on timber, hemp, canvas, and other articles requisite for the conduct of their business, and insisted on licenses being taken out, and bonds given to the commissioners of customs for the construction and navigation of their ships.

Against these and other special burdens British shipowners now loudly, and not without cause, complained. They remarked, with much force, that it was of the last importance that their vessels should trade on equal terms with those of other nations, but that “so long as they continued to be burthened with tonnage, convoy, port-duties, extra insurance, heavy taxes for docks, canals, tunnels, and a thousand other water-brain schemes, they will continue to drag on a miserable existence, till even the profitable concerns of ship-breaking shall be seen no more.”[261] Had their complaints been confined to the special burdens with which they were afflicted, the sympathy of the country would have gone with them; but when they formed an association, which had for its object the maintenance of the old navigation laws in their original integrity, they received no support even from Mr. Pitt, a leading member of whose Administration declared “that however wise and salutary the navigation laws might have been in the infancy of our commerce, he did not perceive the efficacy of them at present, and the necessity of strictly adhering to their original provisions.” This truth was, indeed, at last beginning to break forth upon the world; but it still required many years to convert the shipowners to what they not unnaturally regarded as a heretical doctrine.

Thus they contended, with redoubled force, that if, in the infancy of commerce, the navigation laws had been wise and salutary, their rigorous enforcement now was more than ever imperative, not only from the amazing increase of foreign shipping, but from the heavy duties to which British shipping was liable. British ships, they said, stood charged with duties not merely on every article necessary for their equipment, amounting to upwards of seven per cent. on their whole value, but double duty was levied on their gross tonnage, denominated a war tax, though really the offspring of what was termed “a profound peace.”[262] The ships of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Prussia, they went on to state, could be built and navigated at much lower rates than those of Britain, while many naval stores were the original produce of countries whose ships were not burthened with heavy duties, and where, too, provisions were cheap and wages low. Hence foreigners, it was alleged, “were able to take freight at a lower rate; and, as the smallest difference in that respect determined the preference of the merchant, the carrying-trade of Europe was almost entirely wrested from us.”

Whatever may have been the cause that led to this result, it was stated publicly at the end of March 1804, that there was then scarcely a single offer of trade for a British bottom, except such as were employed in the coasting or colonial trades, which were held secure by the strict enforcement of the Navigation Act. The shipowners pointed with dismay to the mooring places in the river Thames, which were crowded with foreign ships in full employ; while British vessels covered the banks or filled the wet docks in a state of inactivity and decay.

Nor did their complaint stop here. The arbitrary system of impressing sea-apprentices, a system which acted with especial injury in the case of those of the watermen on the river who, being liable to be impressed in the fourth year of their apprenticeship, were lost to their masters when their services were becoming remunerative, was severely and justly criticised; indeed it is on record that, before this period, there had been no fewer than thirty thousand watermen, etc., at work on the river Thames, between Westminster-bridge and Gravesend, exclusive of the British and foreign seamen on board the shipping; but that in 1804 there was not a sixth part of that number. The new dock regulations and the employment of carts instead of lighters to carry goods to the merchants’ inland warehouses swelled the general catalogue of grievances, while the erection of the East India Docks, then in progress, was looked on as the crowning act of mischief, and was therefore viewed by the forlorn shipowners with unmitigated horror.

Amid this numerous body of complainers, some of whose grievances were real, some insignificant, and others imaginary, there were happily men who had more enlarged views, and who were able to urge on the government[263] to take effectual steps to extend the foreign trade, and to devote more attention than heretofore to the colonial and especially to the West India business, in which large commercial fortunes were soon afterwards realised. The trade of the Mediterranean was proposed by them to be cultivated and re-established, as a course of business likely to give vast employment to her shipping, and to secure for England a predominating power and influence over other nations. With this view the establishment of well-qualified agents, versed in commercial affairs, in various ports of that sea was strongly advocated.

But perhaps the most important point of policy pressed upon the attention of the government in connection with shipping was the expediency of encouraging emigration to Canada, with a view to the cultivation of hemp, timber, and other naval stores, so as thus to render England independent of Russia and of the other Northern powers. Far-seeing politicians, and especially Mr. Pitt, had already perceived that the ultimate objects of Russia were to unite the Baltic and the Mediterranean, to secure the trade of the south by the naval stores of the north, and eventually to dispossess England of the trade of the Levant; and this judgment was confirmed by the fact that at this juncture Russia held back and allowed Napoleon to prosecute his schemes of conquest unchecked. It was, therefore, deemed sound policy on the part of England to take every means in her power to enlarge her shipping business with her own colonies. The timber trade alone sufficed to tempt many enterprising Englishmen to strain every effort to open out the vast regions comprised under the names of Upper and Lower Canada. They soon discovered that in those colonies there were nine or ten different indigenous species of oak; that among these the live oak, a very superior description of timber, was of most use for ship-building; that firs and pines abounded in great variety; that the uncultivated parts of the country contained the most extensive forests in the world; and that the white Canadian pine was better adapted than any wood to be found in the Baltic for masts of the largest and best description.

They were also aware that when Canada was under the dominion of the French a sixty-gun ship had been constructed of the red pine of that country, which was found very suitable for the purpose. Besides various descriptions of timber well adapted for ship-building purposes, Canada produced the pitch-pine tree, which yields abundance of pitch, tar, resin, and turpentine, so that English shipowners had resources within their own colonies which would render them in a great measure independent of Russia if they were only developed. The great importance of these and other articles of naval stores, and their prodigious abundance in Canada, caused much more attention to be directed to the trade of that country than had hitherto been the case; but it was only after the perseverance of many years in these judicious efforts to develop the agricultural riches of her North American colonies, that English shipowners reaped the benefits of the extensive trade now carried on between them and the mother-country.