country, and favoured it to a still greater extent in the West Indies. Alone among foreigners the Americans were to be granted the privilege of trading between their own ports and the West Indies, in their own vessels and with their own goods, on exactly the same terms as the British themselves. The bill was rejected. But in 1794, when the French Revolution was running its course of wild excesses, and the British government was even less inclined to trust republics, Jay succeeded in negotiating a temporary treaty which improved the position of American sea-borne trade with the West Indies. His government urged him to get explicit statements of principle inserted, more especially anything that would make cargoes neutral when under neutral flags. This, however, was not possible, as Jay himself pointed out. 'That Britain,' he said, 'at this period, and involved in war, should not admit principles which would impeach the propriety of her conduct in seizing provisions bound to France, and enemy's property on board neutral vessels, does not appear to me extraordinary.' On the whole, Jay did very well to get any treaty through at such a time; and this mere fact shows that the general attitude of the mother country towards her independent children was far from being unfriendly.

Unfriendliness began with the new century, when Jefferson first came into power. He treated the British navigation laws as if they had been invented on purpose to wrong Americans, though they had been in force for a hundred and fifty years, and though they had been originally passed, at the zenith of Cromwell's career, by the only republican government that ever held sway in England. Jefferson said that British policy was so perverse, that when he wished to forecast the British line of action on any particular point he would first consider what it ought to be and then infer the opposite. His official opinion was written in the following words: 'It is not to the moderation or justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with our productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.' On the subject of impressment, or 'Sailors' Rights,' he was clearer still: 'The simplest rule will be that the vessel being American shall be evidence that the seamen on board of her are such.' This would have prevented the impressment of British seamen, even in British harbours, if they were under the American merchant flag—a principle almost as preposterous, at that particular time, as Jefferson's suggestion that the whole Gulf Stream should be claimed 'as of our waters.'

If Jefferson had been backed by a united public, or if his actions had been suited to his words, war would have certainly broken out during his second presidential term, which lasted from 1805 to 1809. But he was a party man, with many political opponents, and without unquestioning support from all on his own side, and he cordially hated armies, navies, and even a mercantile marine. His idea of an American Utopia was a commonwealth with plenty of commerce, but no more shipping than could be helped:

I trust [he said] that the good sense of our country will see that its greatest prosperity depends on a due balance between agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; and not on this protuberant navigation, which has kept us in hot water since the commencement of our government… It is essentially necessary for us to have shipping and seamen enough to carry our surplus products to market, but beyond that I do not think we are bound to give it encouragement… This exuberant commerce brings us into collision with other Powers in every sea.

Notwithstanding such opinions, Jefferson stood firm on the question of 'Sailors' Rights.' He refused to approve a treaty that had been signed on the last day of 1806 by his four commissioners in London, chiefly because it provided no precise guarantee against impressment. The British ministers had offered, and had sincerely meant, to respect all American rights, to issue special instructions against molesting American citizens under any circumstances, and to redress every case of wrong. But, with a united nation behind them and an implacable enemy in front, they could not possibly give up the right to take British seamen from neutral vessels which were sailing the high seas. The Right of Search was the acknowledged law of nations all round the world; and surrender on this point meant death to the Empire they were bound to guard.

Their 'no surrender' on this vital point was, of course, anathema to Jefferson. Yet he would not go beyond verbal fulminations. In the following year, however, he was nearly forced to draw the sword by one of those incidents that will happen during strained relations. In June 1807 two French men-of-war were lying off Annapolis, a hundred miles up Chesapeake Bay. Far down the bay, in Hampton Roads, the American frigate Chesapeake was fitting out for sea. Twelve miles below her anchorage a small British squadron lay just within Cape Henry, waiting to follow the Frenchmen out beyond the three-mile limit. As Jefferson quite justly said, this squadron was 'enjoying the hospitality of the United States.' Presently the Chesapeake got under way; whereupon the British frigate Leopard made sail and cleared the land ahead of her. Ten miles out the Leopard hailed her, and sent an officer aboard to show the American commodore the orders from Admiral Berkeley at Halifax. These orders named certain British deserters as being among the Chesapeake's crew. The American commodore refused to allow a search; but submitted after a fight, during which he lost twenty-one men killed and wounded. Four men were then seized. One was hanged; another died; and the other two were subsequently returned with the apologies of the British government.

James Monroe, of Monroe Doctrine fame, was then American minister in London. Canning, the British foreign minister, who heard the news first, wrote an apology on the spot, and promised to make 'prompt and effectual reparation' if Berkeley had been wrong. Berkeley was wrong. The Right of Search did not include the right to search a foreign man-of-war, though, unlike the modern 'right of search,' which is confined to cargoes, it did include the right to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any 'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly stated that the men's nationality would affect the consideration of restoring them or not. Monroe now had a good case. But he made the fatal mistake of writing officially to Canning before he knew the details, and, worse still, of diluting his argument with other complaints which had nothing to do with the affair itself. The result was a long and involved correspondence, a tardy and ungracious reparation, and much justifiable resentment on the American side.

Unfriendliness soon became Hostility after the Chesapeake affair had sharpened the sting of the Orders-in-Council, which had been issued at the beginning of the same year, 1807. These celebrated Orders simply meant that so long as Napoleon tried to blockade the British Isles by enforcing his Berlin Decree, just so long would the British Navy be employed in blockading him and his allies. Such decisive action, of course, brought neutral shipping more than ever under the power of the British Navy, which commanded all the seaways to the ports of Europe. It accentuated the differences between the American and British governments, and threw the shadow of the coming storm over the exposed colony of Canada.

Not having succeeded in his struggle for 'Sailors' Rights,' Jefferson now took up the cudgels for 'Free Trade'; but still without a resort to arms. His chosen means of warfare was an Embargo Act, forbidding the departure of vessels from United States ports. This,