principles of the law of nations, which are also the principles of justice and honour."
Bayonne Decree, April 17, 1808. It may here be conveniently added, that by a further decree of the 17th of April, 1808,[1] dated at Bayonne, all American vessels, then in the ports of France, and such as should come in thereafter, were ordered to be seized.
Such was the tenor of these extraordinary manifestoes; and the history of the world furnishes no example of similar violations of the ordinary rules which influence the conduct of civilised nations, even in the fury of the most internecine hostilities.
Effects of the Decrees and Orders in Council in England. The policy of these decrees became the battleground of party in England during several successive years. In fact they affected so many powerful classes in so many different ways, that it was natural that in a parliamentary government, not then always acting from the most disinterested motives, a great party clamour should be created. Nor, indeed, can it be doubted that the Berlin Decrees, and still more the Milan and Bayonne Decrees, struck a heavy blow at the American neutral trade; while, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that the merchants of England carried on a profitable clandestine trade with the continent through the intermediation of neutral ships, chiefly American. This commerce Napoleon resolved to destroy at the hazard of risking a war with the United States; and by the policy he pursued in coercing the Americans to resist the English Orders
- ↑ There is a further Decree of March 23, 1810, known as the 'Rambouillet Decree' on this subject (see 'Key to Orders in Council,' No. 13).
