WHILE Napoleon thus tried the temper of America, the Government of
England slowly and with infinite reluctance yielded to American
demands. Not for the first time experience showed that any English
minister whose policy rested on jealousy of America must sooner or
later come to ruin and disgrace.
After the departure of Pinkney and Foster in May, 1811, diplomatic
action was for a time transferred to Washington. The young American
_chargé_ in London, John Spear Smith, could only transmit news
that came officially to his hands. The Marquess Wellesley, still
struggling to reorganize the Ministry, found the Prince Regent less
and less inclined to assist him, until at last he despaired. American
affairs resumed their old position. In June, 1811, Sir William Scott,
after some months of hesitation, rendered final decision that the
French Decrees were still in force, and that in consequence all
American vessels falling within the range of the British Orders in
Council were liable to condemnation.[212] In the Cabinet, Wellesley
urged his colleagues either to negotiate with America or to show
themselves prepared for war; but his colleagues would do neither.[213]
Convinced that the United States would not and could not fight,
Perceval and Eldon, Bathurst and Liverpool, were indifferent to
Wellesley’s discomfort. In the autumn of 1811 nothing in the attitude
of the British government, except its previous hesitation, held out a
hope of change.
Yet many reasons combined to show that concessions were inevitable.
The sweeping ruin that overwhelmed British commerce and industry in
1810 sank deep among the laboring classes in 1811. The seasons doubled
the distress. The winter had been intense, the summer was unfavorable;
wheat rose in the autumn to one hundred and forty-five shillings, or
about thirty-six dollars the quarter, and as the winter of 1811 began,
disorders broke out in the manufacturing districts. The inland counties
reached a state of actual insurrection which no exercise of force
seemed to repress. The American non-importation aggravated the trouble,
and worked unceasingly to shake the authority of Spencer Perceval,
already one of the most unpopular ministers England had ever seen.
Popular distress alone could hardly have effected a change in
Perceval’s system; so great a result was not to be produced by means
hitherto so little regarded. The moment marked an era in English
history, for the new class of laborers, the mill-operatives and other
manufacturing workmen, took for the first time an active share in
shaping legislation. In their hostility to Perceval’s policy they were
backed by their employers; but the united efforts of employers and
workmen were not yet equal to controlling the Government, even though
they were aided by the American non-importation. They worried Perceval,
but did not break him down. At the close of 1811 he showed still no
signs of yielding; but news then arrived that the American Congress had
met, and that the President’s Message, the debates in the House, the
tone of the press, and the feelings of the American people announced
war. This was a new force with which Perceval could not deal.
No man of common-sense could charge England with want of courage, for
if ever a nation had fought its way, England had a right to claim
whatever credit such a career bestowed; but England lived in war, she
knew its exact cost, and at that moment she could not afford it. The
most bigoted Tory could see that if Napoleon succeeded in his coming
attack on Russia, as he had hitherto succeeded in every war he had
undertaken in Europe even when circumstances were less favorable,
he would need only the aid of America to ruin beyond redemption the
trade and finances of Great Britain. Little as Englishmen believed in
the military capacity of the United States, they needed too much the
markets and products of America to challenge war.
The gradual decline of the domineering tone which Canning had made
fashionable offered a curious study in politics. In 1807 the affair of
the “Little Belt” would have caused violent anger; in 1812 it created
hardly a flurry. The Tory “Courier” talked wildly, but the “Times” took
the matter with calmness; the Ministry showed no offence, and within
a few weeks the affair was forgotten. Even after this irritation,
the British public seemed pleased rather than angered to learn that
Lord Wellesley had yielded complete apology and redress to America
for the “Chesapeake” outrage. The commercial class for many months
expected energetic retaliation by their government against the American
Non-importation Act; but in September this idea was laid aside, and
no one complained. Little by little the press took a defensive tone.
In the place of threats the newspapers were filled with complaints.
America was unfair, unreasonable, unjust; she called on England to
admit that the French Decrees were repealed when in fact they were
still in force; she threatened war; she hectored and bullied,--but the
more dignified course required England to be temperate though firm.
Parliament met Jan. 7, 1812, and the Prince Regent’s speech was
studiously moderate in its reference to the United States. In the
Commons, January 8, Whitbread attacked ministers for their failure to
conciliate America; and Spencer Perceval replied in a manner that could
hardly have satisfied himself.
“He would allow,” he said,[214] “that a war with America would
be an evil to Great Britain, but he also knew that such a war
would be a greater evil to America. As an evil to America he
was anxious to avert it; he looked upon America as accessory to
the prosperity and welfare of Great Britain, and would be sorry
to see her impoverished, crushed, or destroyed.... Sure he was
that no one could construe those truly conciliatory dispositions
of England into fear; but he was of the opinion that England,
conscious of her own dignity, could bear more from America for
peace’s sake than from any other Power on earth.”
This sentiment was the more significant because the latest news showed
that England in the immediate future would be obliged to bear a great
deal from America. The news became every day more and more alarming,
and was reinforced by steadily increasing outcry from Birmingham,
Liverpool, Nottingham, Hull, ending in a general agitation organized
by active radicals, with Brougham at their head. So rapidly was one
attack followed by another, that Perceval and his lieutenants--George
Rose and James Stephen--could no longer carry their points by mere
weight of office. The Marquess Wellesley, refusing to serve longer
under Perceval, resigned from the Cabinet January 16, and no one felt
confident that Perceval could supply his place. During more than a
month negotiations continued without result, until, February 22, Lord
Castlereagh received the appointment of Foreign Secretary.
During this interval the movement against the Orders in Council gained
strength. In the Commons, February 13, another debate occurred when
Whitbread, in a strong American speech, moved for the diplomatic
correspondence with the United States, and was answered with some
temper by Stephen and Perceval. Stephen went so far as to declare,--and
whatever he declared he certainly believed,--that “nothing but the
utmost aversion to a quarrel with America would have enabled this
country to have borne so much. So far from having done anything to
provoke a rupture with America, the strongest, most persevering, and
almost even humiliating means had been employed to avoid it;”[215]
but he would not surrender to her the carrying and coasting trade
of Europe even to prevent a war. Perceval spoke more evasively than
usual, defending his commercial system as one that had been begun by
his Whig predecessors, and throwing the blame for its irregularities
on Napoleon’s decrees; but although that day he was supposed to be in
extreme peril of losing his majority, he closed his speech by declaring
that sooner than yield to the repeal of the Orders in Council he
would refuse share in any Administration. Alexander Baring answered
that in this case war could hardly be avoided, and made an earnest
appeal, founded on the distress of the manufacturing towns, in favor
of the direct interference of Parliament to overrule the minister.
Even William Wilberforce, whose speeches sometimes recalled those of
Polonius, and whose hesitations generally marked the decline rather
than the rise of a Ministry in power, felt himself constrained to say
that “there was not at all times a sufficient attention in this country
to the spirit of conciliation toward other countries, and particularly
toward America. It would be well if persons in high situations in
government had been more abundant in their civilities to that nation.”
Again, five days afterward, Baring attacked Perceval by an embarrassing
motion on the subject of licenses. No such scandal as the license
system had been known in England since the monopolies of the Tudors and
Stuarts. Most of the trade between Great Britain and the Continent was
conducted by the Board of Trade on one side and Napoleon on the other,
under special licenses issued for the carriage of specified articles.
In 1807 the number of such licenses amounted to sixteen hundred; in
1810 they reached eighteen thousand. Owing to practical difficulties
and to Napoleon’s dislike, American vessels took few licenses. A
nondescript class of so-called neutrals under the flags of Pappenberg,
Kniphausen, and Varel, carrying double licenses and double sets of
papers, served as the agents for this curious commerce which reeked
with fraud and perjury. In the case of the “Æolus,” Aug. 8, 1810, the
Court said: “It is a matter perfectly notorious that we are carrying on
the trade of the whole world under simulated and disguised papers. The
commerce of the world unavoidably assumes a disguise; these disguises
we ourselves are under the necessity of employing, with simulation and
dissimulation.” Dr. Joseph Phillimore, perhaps the highest authority
on civil law in England, in two strong pamphlets[216] declared that
ancient rules and practices had been rendered obsolete, so that the
Admiralty Courts were no longer occupied with the law of nations, but
only with the interpretation of licenses; and while the property of
enemies was as invariably restored as formerly it had been condemned,
the condemnation of true neutral property had become as much a matter
of course as had been its restitution a few years before. No one, even
among the sternest supporters of the Orders in Council, ventured to
defend the licenses on any other ground than that of their necessity.
Baring’s motion called up Perceval again. “The only principle on
which Government acted,” said he,[217] “was to secure to the natives
of England that trade by means of licenses, the profits of which
without them would devolve to the hands of aliens.” This admission, or
avowal, seemed to yield the whole ground of complaint which America
had taken; neither Perceval nor Rose ventured to defend the licenses
as in themselves deserving support; they stood only by the system.
Their attitude led to another and more famous debate, which added an
interesting chapter to the history of England.
In the Lords, February 28, the Marquess of Lansdowne moved for a
committee to consider the subject of the Orders in Council. Like
all that Lord Lansdowne did, his speech was temperate and able;
but his arguments were the same that have been so often repeated.
Lord Bathurst, President of the Board of Trade, replied. Bathurst’s
argument was singularly free from the faults of Perceval and Rose; and
he went to the verge of destroying his own case by avowing that in
the clamor raised about the Orders in Council no one could say what
those orders were, or what would be the consequences of yielding to
American demands. He was sure that France had suffered from the effect
of the system, but he was not so certain that England had been also
a sufferer, while he maintained that the licenses tended to diminish
the spirit of perjury, and that the abandonment of licenses would only
place an additional obstacle in the way of trade. “Were they to put
restraints on the freedom of British commerce for the simple purpose
of giving the trade of Europe to the Americans?” This avowal, like
those made by Perceval and Stephen, seemed to concede the justice of
American complaints; but perhaps it admitted only the reply made by
Lord Holland, who said in plain words that the choice lay between the
orders and war, and that he could not suppose the orders to be their
Lordships’ preference. Lansdowne’s motion was rejected by a vote of one
hundred and thirty-five to seventy-one.
In the Commons the great debate took place March 3, when Henry Brougham
repeated Lansdowne’s motion for a committee, after a speech showing
as much self-restraint as clearness and force. In reply, George Rose
offered a general denial of the facts which Brougham alleged. He denied
that the orders injured the British export trade; that the license
system injured British shipping or increased perjury; or that the
orders caused manufacturing distress. On all these points he arrayed
statistics in his support; but toward the close of his speech he made
a remark--such as had been made many times by every defender of the
system--surrendering in effect the point in diplomatic dispute between
England and the United States. “The honorable gentleman,” he said,[218]
“had not been correct in calling these orders a system of retaliation;
they were rather a system of self-defence, a plan to prevent the whole
trade of the world from being snatched away from her.” He was followed
by Alexander Baring, who condemned the policy which built up the
shipping of France at the cost of American shipping, and manufactures
in Massachusetts at the cost of British manufactures; and after
Baring came James Stephen, who repeated his old arguments without
essential change. Then toward midnight, after these four long, serious,
statistical speeches, such as usually emptied the House, George Canning
rose; and so keen was the interest and anxiety of the moment that
more than four hundred members crowded in, curious to learn by what
ingenuity Canning would defend a threatened vote against those Orders
in Council of which he had been so long the champion.[219]
“For these Orders in Council,” he said, “so far as he had been
connected with their adoption, he was ready to take his full
share of responsibility. What orders were truly meant? Why,
they were the Orders in Council which, until he had heard the
speech of the right honorable gentleman (Mr. Rose), he had
always looked upon as retaliatory upon the enemy; which had
been so understood in every instance, until the Vice-President
of the Board of Trade, in contradiction to every statement
which had hitherto been given to the public on the subject,--in
contradiction to every document in office respecting these
Orders,--in contradiction to every communication which he
(Mr. Canning) had made, and every despatch written in his
official character explanatory of their nature and spirit,--in
contradiction to every speech which had been made in Parliament
in defence of them,--had thought proper to represent them
not as measures retaliatory upon the enemy, but as measures
of self-defence. Self-defence, but not retaliatory!... If
they were to be in no larger a sense retaliatory than as
self-defensive,--if they were not to retaliate directly
against the enemy, but to be defensive against a rival in
trade,--if they were not to be belligerent measures, but purely
defensive,--then all the arguments by which they had hitherto
been supported would fail to apply.”
Again and again Canning returned to this slip of the tongue by which
Rose had given him pretext for turning against the Administration.
“If at any time it should appear that these orders did not
retort his aggression upon the enemy, but operated solely to
the injury of the neutrals; if even the British government
should appear to have interfered to relieve their pressure upon
the enemy,--they would stand upon far different principles
than those upon which he had supported them, and would in his
opinion be very proper objects for examination and revision....
Were he called upon to state his opinion of what he conceived
the Orders in Council should be, he could not do it more fully
than by saying that they were most perfect as they approached
toward a belligerent measure and receded from a commercial one.
Let them have for their object the pressure and distress of the
enemy, for the purpose of compelling him to listen to terms
of accommodation, and not for the narrow policy of wringing
temporary concessions from him with which they might go to his
own market.”
To the amazement of friend and foe Canning next attacked the license
system as one of which he had little knowledge, but whose details
required investigation. As for America, as he was the last man who
would lay the honor of the country at her feet, so would he be among
the first to go far in the work of honorable conciliation, and he
would not oppose the motion before the House because it might have
incidentally the effect of conciliating her. Finally, if the account
of Plumer Ward be true, “he concluded the first dull and flat speech I
ever heard him make, without the smallest support from the House, and
sat down without a cheer and almost without its being known that he had
finished.”
Plumer Ward was a passionate admirer of Spencer Perceval, and his anger
with Canning showed the soreness caused by Canning’s sudden change
of front. Perceval was obliged to rescue Rose, but in doing so made
the case worse rather than better as far as regarded America. Having
declared that the orders were strictly retaliatory, he added, in the
same breath, that “the object of Government was to protect and to force
the trade of this country.... The object of the Orders in Council was
not to destroy the trade of the Continent, but to force the Continent
to trade with us.” Had this assertion been made by Madison or Brougham
it would have been instantly contradicted; but Perceval’s silence was
still less creditable than his avowals. No one knew so well as Perceval
where to strike with effect at Canning; for not only could he show that
from the first Canning was privy to the system of forcing commerce upon
France, but he had preserved the letter in which Canning at the outset
advised him to keep out of sight the exceptions which gave the measure
the air of a commercial rather than a political transaction. Never had
a distinguished man exposed himself with less caution than Canning,
by declaring that in his opinion the orders required revision from the
moment the British government should appear to intervene to relax their
pressure upon the enemy; for during two years of his official life he
had given steady though silent support to the Board of Trade in its
persistent efforts to supply France, by means of licenses in thousands
and smuggling without limit, with every product known to commerce.
Such conduct challenged the severest retort, but Perceval made none.
He would have been superior to the statesmen of his time had he felt
the true nature of that sleight-of-hand which he and Canning practised,
and which, like the trick of blacklegs on the race-course, consisted
in shuffling together the two words, “Retaliation--Self-defence!
Self-defence--Retaliation!” but he could at least understand the
impossibility of exposing Canning without also exposing himself.
The debate ended in a division. One hundred and forty-four members,
including Canning and Wilberforce, went into the lobby with Brougham.
Only a majority of seventy-two remained to be overcome; and to
Brougham’s energetic nature such a majority offered an incentive to
exertion. Perceval’s friends, on the other hand, exulted because this
majority of seventy-two stood by him against the combined forces of
Wellesley, Canning, the Radicals, and the Whigs.[220] Except for one
danger, Perceval and his system were still secure; but the fear that
the Americans meant at last to fight gave him no rest,--it dogged his
steps, and galled him at every motion. Neither Rose nor James Stephen
could prove, by any statistics under the control of the Board of
Trade, that their system would benefit British commerce if it produced
an American war. Already the north and west of England, the inland
counties, the seaports, had risen in insurrection against the orders.
Stephen and Rose exhausted themselves and the House to prove that the
balance of profit was still in England’s favor; but what would become
of their balance-sheet if they were obliged to add the cost of an
American war to the debtor side of their account?
In the effort to strengthen his Ministry Perceval persuaded Lord
Sidmouth to enter the Cabinet, but only on condition that the orders
should be left an open question. Sidmouth plainly said that he would
rather give up the orders than face an American war.[221] He also asked
that the license system should be renounced. Perceval replied that
this would be a greater sacrifice than if the licenses had never been
granted.[222] Lord Sidmouth was not a great man,--Canning despised
his abilities, and the Prince of Wales called him a blockhead;[223]
but he was, except Lord Castlereagh, the only ally to be found, and
Perceval accepted him on his own terms. The new Cabinet at once
took the American question in hand, and Castlereagh then wrote his
instructions of April 10 to Foster, making use of Bassano’s report to
justify England’s persistence in the orders; but besides this despatch
Castlereagh wrote another of the same date, in which Sidmouth’s idea
took shape. If the United States would restore intercourse with
Great Britain, the British government would issue no more licenses
and would resort to rigorous blockades.[224] This great concession
showed how rapidly Perceval lost ground; but this was not yet all.
April 21 the Prince Regent issued his formal declaration that whenever
the French government should publish an authentic Act expressly and
unconditionally repealing the Berlin and Milan Decrees, the Orders
in Council, including that of Jan. 7, 1807, should be wholly and
absolutely revoked.
Had the United States at that moment been so fortunate as to enjoy
the services of Pinkney in London, or of any man whose position and
abilities raised him above the confusion of party politics, he might
have convinced them that war was unnecessary. The mere threat was
sufficient. Sidmouth’s entrance into the Cabinet showed the change
of current, and once Perceval began to give way, he could not stop.
Unfortunately the United States had no longer a minister in England. In
July, 1811, the President ordered Jonathan Russell to London to act
as _chargé_ until a minister should be appointed, which he added
would be done as soon as Congress met;[225] but he changed his mind and
appointed no minister, while Jonathan Russell, seeing that Perceval
commanded a majority and was determined to maintain his system,
reported the situation as hopeless.[226]
Brougham, without taking the precaution of giving Russell the daily
information he so much needed, devoted all his energies to pressing
the popular movement against the Orders in Council. Petition after
petition was hurried to Parliament, and almost every petition caused
a new debate. George Rose, who possessed an unhappy bluntness, in
conversation with a Birmingham committee said that the two countries
were like two men with their heads in buckets of water, whose struggle
was which of the two could hold out longest before suffocation. The
phrase was seized as a catchword, and helped agitation. April 28
Lord Stanley, in the House, renewed the motion for a committee on
the petitions against the orders. Perceval had been asked whether he
would consent to the committee, and had refused; but on consulting his
followers he found such symptoms of disaffection as obliged him to
yield rather than face a defeat. George Rose then announced, greatly
against his will, that as a matter of respect to the petitioners
he would no longer oppose their request; Castlereagh and Perceval,
cautioning the House that nothing need be expected from the
investigation, followed Rose; while Stephen, after denouncing as a
foul libel the charge that the orders had been invented to extend the
commerce of Great Britain, also yielded to the committee “as a negative
good, and to prevent misconstruction.”
Stimulated by the threatening news from America, Brougham pressed with
his utmost energy the victory he had won. The committee immediately
began its examination of witnesses, who appeared from every quarter to
prove that the Orders in Council and the subsequent non-importation had
ruined large branches of British trade, and had lopped away a market
that consumed British products to the value of more than ten million
pounds sterling a year. Perceval and Stephen did their best to stem the
tide, but were slowly overborne, and seemed soon to struggle only for
delay.
Then followed a melodramatic change. May 11, as the prime minister
entered the House to attend the investigation, persons about the
door heard the report of a pistol, and saw Spencer Perceval fall
forward shot through the heart. By the hand of a lunatic moved only
by imaginary personal motives, this minister, who seemed in no way
a tragical figure, became the victim of a tragedy without example
in modern English history; but although England had never been in a
situation more desperate, the true importance of Spencer Perceval was
far from great, and when he vanished in the flash of a pistol from the
stage where he seemed to fill the most considerable part, he stood
already on the verge of overthrow. His death relieved England of a
burden. Brougham would not allow his inquiry to be suspended, and the
premier’s assassination rather concealed than revealed the defeat his
system must have suffered.
During the negotiations which followed, in the midst of difficulties
in forming a new Ministry, Castlereagh received from Jonathan
Russell Napoleon’s clandestine Decree of Repeal. Brougham asked,
May 22, what construction was to be put by ministers on this paper.
Castlereagh replied that the decree was a trick disgraceful to any
civilized government, and contained nothing to satisfy the conditions
required by England. Apart from the subordinate detail that his view
of the decree was correct, his remarks meant nothing. The alarm
caused by news that Congress had imposed an embargo as the last
step before war, the annoyance created by John Henry’s revelations
and Castlereagh’s lame defence, the weight of evidence pressing on
Parliament against the Orders in Council, the absence of a strong or
permanent Ministry,--these influences, gaining from day to day, forced
the conviction that a change of system must take place. June 8 Lord
Liverpool announced that he had formed an Administration, and would
deal in due course with the Orders in Council. June 16 Brougham made
his motion for a repeal of the orders. When he began his speech he did
not know what part the new Ministry would take, but while he unfolded
his long and luminous argument he noticed that James Stephen failed
to appear in the House. This absence could mean only that Stephen had
been deserted by ministers; and doubt ceased when Brougham and Baring
ended, for then Lord Castlereagh--after Perceval’s death the leader of
the House--rose and awkwardly announced that the Government, though
till within three or four days unable to deliberate on the subject, had
decided to suspend immediately the Orders in Council.
Thus ended the long struggle waged for five years by the United States
against the most illiberal Government known in England within modern
times. Never since the Definitive Treaty of Peace had America won so
complete a triumph, for the surrender lacked on England’s part no
element of defeat. Canning never ceased taunting the new Ministry
with their want of courage in yielding without a struggle. The press
submitted with bad grace to the necessity of holding its tongue. Every
one knew that the danger, already almost a certainty, of an American
war chiefly caused the sudden and silent surrender, and that the
Ministry like the people shrank from facing the consequences of their
own folly. Every one cried that England should not suffer herself to
be provoked by the irritating conduct of America; and at a moment
when every word and act of the American government announced war in
the rudest terms, not a voice was heard in England for accepting the
challenge, nor was a musket made ready for defence. The new Ministry
thought the war likely to drive them from office, for they were even
weaker than when Spencer Perceval led them. The “Times” of June 17
declared that whatever might be the necessity of defending British
rights by an American war, yet it would be the most unpopular war ever
known, because every one would say that with happier talents it might
have been avoided. “Indeed,” it added, “every one is so declaring at
the present moment; so that we who have ever been the most strenuous
advocates of the British cause in this dispute are really overwhelmed
by the general clamor.” Bitter as the mortification was, the headlong
abandonment of the Orders in Council called out reproaches only against
the ministers who originally adopted them. “We are most surprised,”
said the “Times” of June 18, “that such acts could ever have received
the sanction of the Ministry when so little was urged in their defence.”
Such concessions were commonly the result rather than the prelude of
war; they were not unlike those by which Talleyrand succeeded, in 1799,
in restoring friendly relations between France and America. Three
months earlier they would have answered their purpose; but the English
were a slow and stubborn race. Perhaps that they should have repealed
the orders at all was more surprising than that they should have waited
five years; but although they acted more quickly and decidedly than was
their custom, Spencer Perceval lived three months too long. The Orders
in Council were abandoned at Westminster June 17; within twenty-four
hours at Washington war was declared; and forty-eight hours later
Napoleon, about to enter Russia, issued the first bulletin of his Grand
Army.