Contentions at home respecting the Orders in Council.
- tilities.[1] In England the contentions which arose
respecting the Orders in Council shook the commercial peace of the country. Every man espoused the side with which his own peculiar interests were interwoven, claiming, however, to be the infallible guide upon the subject to all his countrymen. Mr. Alexander Baring, the second son of Sir Francis Baring, who had passed many years in the United States, where he and his brother Henry had formed matrimonial alliances, published a pamphlet[2] which greatly favoured the American view of the subject, and exhibited a feeling of the greatest alarm lest "as past errors had brought us to the brink of a precipice, the next might throw us over it."[3]
Declaration of war with America. Although these Orders in Council were loudly condemned by the Whigs, who made them their leading stalking-horse, whereby to assail the ministry, the Tories and the government were inflexible, and chose rather to risk a rupture with the United States than to relax their policy. They were still of opinion that the infallible consequences of repealing these orders and of giving up the licence trade would be to open the ports of France, and to transfer to the United States the commerce of the world. This determination at last brought about the long pending rupture, but other reasons were not wanting to hasten this lamentable event.
The Americans, seeing the vast preparations made
- ↑ The case of the English will be found treated at great length in Mr. Stephen's speech, March 1809, a full verbatim report of which will be found at the end of vol. xiii. 'Parl. Debates' for that year.
- ↑ See ante for notice of the celebrated pamphlet.
- ↑ Concluding sentence of Mr. Baring's 'Inquiry into the Causes and Consequences of the Orders in Council, and an Examination of the Conduct of Great Britain towards the Neutral Commerce of America.'
