control the immensity of the seas), captured American vessels for contraventions committed a few days after, and sometimes before, the publication of the decrees. As the news of each seizure reached the American minister in Paris, he complained with increasing energy. He invoked the principles alike of international and civil law, appealing to the convention by which the rights of neutrals were guaranteed, forbidding the application of laws until they could have become known, and, in the name of his outraged government, declared that "such proceedings, and the continuation of such acts, could not fail to interrupt the good understanding, which had so long subsisted between the two Powers, and had been mutually advantageous, which it would be unwise to destroy for the sake of pillaging a few merchant vessels."[1]
But Napoleon understood perfectly well his own policy. Casting aside all those rules which restrain constitutional governments, his aim was to excite the Americans to open war against England; and whilst thus trampling upon the rights of America, the French minister was instructed to proclaim those of neutrals in the name of the Emperor! In a letter from M. Champigny to Mr. Armstrong, 12th Feb., 1808, it is stated that "A merchant vessel is a floating colony; any act of violence committed against such a vessel is an attack on the independence of its government. The seas belong to no nation; they are the common property, the domain of all." In spite, however, of the enunciation of these just and liberal
- ↑ Mr. Armstrong's letter to M. Champigny, at Paris, 'American Foreign Relations,' vol. iii. There is a vast number of letters.
