Complaints of the Americans against England. her own commercial pursuits; while their effect on her relations with the United States of America was of the most irritating and unpleasant character. When they came into full force, the English export trade with that country, previously valued at twelve millions sterling per annum, ostensibly fell to five and a quarter millions, although the total aggregate exports experienced no such corresponding diminution, thereby proving that the Americans had absorbed, as the greatest maritime neutrals, the largest share of the carrying trade. But when the English Orders in Council, issued in consequence of Napoleon's decrees, struck a blow at this trade, the Americans, seeing so lucrative a branch of their commerce withdrawn from their hands, set up an indignant appeal, and, though tamely acquiescing in Napoleon's still harsher measures, declaimed furiously against the English government, when it exhibited a resolute determination to prevent the carrying trade of the world being taken from English shipowners.
The most important of the British Orders in Council, as we have seen, bore date 11th November, 1807, the Milan Decree following on the 17th of December of the same year; but the Americans, having been apprised of the intentions of the English government, adopted precautionary measures by imposing a general embargo from and after the 22nd of December, 1807.[1] Nothing can prove more conclusively how unpopular this step was among the shipowners of the United States than the fact that every vessel in the foreign
- ↑ This Act, in its fullest stringency, meant no commercial intercourse with any European state (see 'Key to Orders in Council,' No. 10).
