The new Ministry which succeeded “All the Talents” and took seat in
Parliament April 8, 1807, represented everything in English society
that was most impervious to reason. In its origin a creature of royal
bigotry trembling on the verge of insanity, before it had been a few
short weeks in office every liberal or tolerant Englishman was shocked
to find that this band of Tories, whose prejudices were such as modern
society could scarcely understand, and who had been forced into office
by the personal will of an almost imbecile King, did in reality
represent a great reaction of the English people against tolerant
principles, and reflected the true sense of the nation as it had never
been reflected by Grenville or Fox. Parliament was dissolved April 27,
though only four months old; and June 22, when the “Leopard” was firing
into the “Chesapeake,” the new Parliament met at Westminster Hall,
with a ministerial majority of more than two hundred country squires,
elected on the cry that the Church was in danger.
From its nominal head, this Ministry was called the Portland
administration; but its leader was Spencer Perceval, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and its mouthpiece was George Canning, the Foreign
Secretary. These two commoners--men of no special family connection,
of no estates, and little so-called “stake in the country”--guided the
aristocratic and conservative society of England, and exaggerated its
tendencies. In modern days little is remembered of Spencer Perceval
except that he became at last one of the long list of victims to
lunatic assassins; but for a whole generation no English Liberal
mentioned the name of the murdered prime minister without recalling
the portrait drawn by Sydney Smith in the wittiest and keenest of his
writings,[36] in which Perceval was figured as living at Hampstead upon
stewed meats and claret, and walking to church every Sunday before
eleven young gentlemen of his own begetting, with their faces washed
and their hair pleasingly combed.
In Sydney Smith’s caricature there was little exaggeration. Spencer
Perceval was forty-five years old, a lawyer of the best character,
devoted to his family, his church, and sovereign; a man after Lord
Eldon’s heart, who brought to the Treasury Bench the legal knowledge
and mental habits of a leader at the Chancery Bar and the political
morality of a lawyer’s brief. The criticism was not less revolting than
remarkable, that many of the men whose want of political morality was
most conspicuous in this story were, both in England and in America,
models of private respectability and fanatical haters of vice. That
Timothy Pickering and Roger Griswold should join hands with Aaron Burr
was less wonderful than that Spencer Perceval and his friend James
Stephen, the author of “War in Disguise,” should adopt the violence of
Napoleon as the measure of their own morals, and avow that they meant
to respect no other standard. With the same voice Spencer Perceval
expressed fear lest calling Parliament on a Monday should lead members
into Sunday travel, and justified the bombardment of Copenhagen and the
robbery of American commerce.
The Whigs thought little of his abilities. Sydney Smith, who delighted
to ridicule him, said that he had the head of a country parson and the
tongue of an Old Bailey lawyer.[37] The Tories admired and followed
him as readily as they had once followed Pitt; but to an American,
necessarily prejudiced, Sydney Smith’s estimate seemed just. Every
American critic placed Perceval in an order of intelligence not only
below the Whigs, but below Lord Sidmouth. When confronted with the
dulness of Spencer Perceval, Americans could even feel relief in the
sarcasm of George Canning, which, unlike Perceval’s speeches, had at
least the merit of rhetoric.
Of George Canning, who passed so rapidly across the scene, and yet
left so sharp an impression on the memory of America, something must
be said, if only to explain how a man so gifted, and in later life
so different in influence, should have thought it worth his while
to challenge the hatred of a people whose future he, unlike his
colleague Perceval, had imagination enough to foresee. George Canning
was thirty-seven years old when he took charge of the Foreign office.
His father, who came from a very respectable but in no way eminent
family, died in 1771; his mother having no means of support became
a provincial actress, and the boy was adopted by an uncle, who sent
him to Eton and Oxford. He left Oxford at the time when the French
Revolution promised a new birth to Europe, and Canning was then a warm
Republican from sympathy and conviction. The political reaction which
followed swept the young man to the opposite extreme; and his vehemence
for monarchy and the Tories gave point to a Whig sarcasm,--that men
had often been known to turn their coats, but this was the first time
that a boy had turned his jacket. In consequence of his conversion
Pitt brought him into Parliament in 1793, and placed him in office in
1796. In the hotbed of Pitt’s personal favor[38] Canning’s natural
faults were stimulated, until the irritation caused by his sarcastic
wit and by what the stolid gentry thought his flippancy roused a sort
of insurrection against him. Few men were more admired, and none was
more feared or hated; for it was impossible to say what time-honored
monument he might overthrow in defending.
No man in England flung himself more violently into the reaction
against Republican ideas than this young Republican of 1789. Canning’s
contempt was unbounded for everything that savored of liberal
principles; and in following the impulses of his passion he lost
whatever political morality he had possessed. If one act in Bonaparte’s
career concentrated more than another the treason and violence of a
lifetime, it was the _coup d’état_ of the 18th Brumaire, in 1799, when
he drove the Legislature at the point of the bayonet from the hall at
St. Cloud, and annihilated French liberty, as he hoped, forever; yet
this act, which might have been applauded by some English statesmen
whose heads paid on Tower Hill the penalty for such treason to the
liberties of their own country, threw Canning into paroxysms of delight.
“Huzza! huzza! huzza!” he wrote[39] on hearing the news; “for no
language but that of violent and tumultuous and triumphant exclamation
can sufficiently describe the joy and satisfaction which I feel
at this complete overthrow and extinction of all the hopes of the
proselytes to new principles.... It is the lasting ridicule thrown
upon all systems of democratic equality,--it is the galling conviction
carried home to the minds of all the brawlers for freedom in this and
every other country,--that there never was, nor will be, nor can be, a
leader of a mob faction who does not mean to be the lord and not the
servant of the people. It is this that makes the name of Bonaparte
dear to me.... Henceforth, with regard to France and the principles
of France, or to any country similarly circumstanced as to extent,
population, manners, etc., _Republican_ and _fool_ are synonymous
terms.”
Canning had several qualities in common with Bonaparte, and one of them
was the habit of classifying under the head of fools persons whose
opinions he did not fancy,--from the man who believed in a republic to
the man who liked dry champagne. In his mouth such persons were either
fools or liars; and Americans, with few exceptions, came under one or
the other of these heads. After the 18th Brumaire the world contained
but one leader of a mob faction, brawling for liberty; but he was
President of the United States. No miraculous sagacity was needed to
foretell what treatment he was likely to receive at the hands of two
men like Canning and Bonaparte, should the empire of the world ever be
divided between them. To throw lasting ridicule upon all systems of
democratic equality was Canning’s most passionate wish, and his success
was marvellous. Even his squibs exploded like rockets. In literature,
his “Needy Knife-grinder” was a harmless piece of clever satire, but in
the “Anti-Jacobin” it was a political event.
In Parliament Canning’s influence was not yet very great. He relied too
much on wit, and what was then called quizzing, or he imitated Pitt’s
oratory too closely; but even in the House of Commons he steadily won
ground, and while Burke, Pitt, Fox, Windham, and Sheridan, one after
another, disappeared or were thrown into the shade, Canning’s figure
became more prominent on the Treasury Bench between two such foils
as Spencer Perceval and Lord Castlereagh. Although his mind ripened
slowly, and was still far from maturity, he was already a master in
choice of language; he always excelled in clearness of statement
and skill of illustration; and if his taste had been as pure as his
English, he would have taken rank with the greatest English orators.
Some of his metaphors survived, with those of Burke and Sheridan.
When Napoleon was forced back to the Elbe, “the mighty deluge, by
which the Continent had been overwhelmed, began to subside; the
limits of nations were again visible; and the spires and turrets
of ancient establishments began to reappear above the subsiding
wave.” In addressing the people at Plymouth, he likened England to a
line-of-battle ship; “one of those stupendous masses now reposing on
their shadows in perfect stillness,” but ready at a sign to ruffle,
as it were, its swelling plumage, to awaken its dormant thunder.
Such eloquence recalled Burke at his less philosophical moments. It
contained more rhetoric than thought; but Canning was there at his
best. At his worst, as Americans commonly saw him, his natural tones
seemed artificial, and only his imitations seemed natural. To Americans
Canning never showed himself except as an actor. As an instance of his
taste, Americans could best appreciate the climax with which he once
electrified the House of Commons in speaking of the Spanish American
Republics: “I called the new world into existence to redress the
balance of the old.” The House cheered to the echo, while America stood
open-mouthed in astonishment at the success of such extravagant egoism.
In the new Ministry of 1807, the lead was to the strongest; and
Canning, who treated with almost open contempt his rival Lord
Castlereagh, a man intellectually his inferior, could count upon
a great destiny. Less scrupulous or less broad than Pitt, he held
that Napoleon’s course had absolved England from ordinary rules of
morals. To fight Bonaparte with his own weapons had become the duty of
Englishmen; and the first act of the new Administration showed what
meaning was to be put on this favorite phrase.
February 8, Napoleon fought the desperate battle of Eylau, which
closely resembled a defeat. His position was critical; but before
Canning could fairly get control of events, Napoleon, June 14, again
attacked the Russians at Friedland and won a decisive victory. June 25
Napoleon and Alexander held an interview on an island in the Niemen.
The chief point in question was whether Alexander would abandon
England; and this he was almost glad to do, for England had abandoned
him. Alexander yielded to the force and flattery of Napoleon, and
signed July 7 the treaty of Tilsit. By a private understanding the
remaining neutrals were left to Napoleon to be dealt with as he
pleased. Denmark was the only neutral power the control of which was
necessary for the success of Napoleon’s system, and August 2 he sent
orders to Bernadotte, who was to command at Hamburg: “If England does
not accept the mediation of Russia, Denmark must declare war upon her,
or I will declare war on Denmark.”[40] Finding that the Prince Royal
hesitated, Napoleon, August 17, sent orders[41] to Bernadotte to hold
himself ready with all his troops to march into Denmark either as ally
or enemy, according to the issue of the pending negotiation. Threatened
by this overwhelming danger, the Prince Royal of Denmark alternately
promised and evaded the declaration of war; when suddenly his doubts
were brought to an end by the diplomacy of Canning.
The British ministry had been secretly informed of what took place at
Tilsit, and even without secret information could not have doubted the
fate of Denmark. Vigor was necessary; and as early as July 19, before
news had arrived of the formal signature of the Tilsit treaty, the
Cabinet decided on sending to Copenhagen a large naval expedition which
had been collected for a different purpose. July 26 the expedition,
commanded by Lord Gambier, sailed from the Downs. It consisted of some
twenty ships of the line, forty frigates, and transports containing
twenty-seven thousand troops commanded by Lord Cathcart; and it
carried a diplomatic agent with instructions to require from the Prince
Royal of Denmark the delivery of the Danish fleet, as a temporary
security for the safety of England.
The man whom Canning charged with this unpleasant duty was the same
Jackson whose appointment as Minister to the United States had been
opposed by Rufus King, and who had subsequently gone as British
minister to Berlin. Jackson’s dogmatic temper and overbearing manners
made him obnoxious even to the clerks of the Foreign Office;[42] but
he was a favorite with Lord Malmesbury, who since Pitt’s death had
become Canning’s political mentor, and Lord Malmesbury’s influence was
freely used in Jackson’s behalf. Obeying his instructions, the British
envoy went to Kiel and had an interview with the Prince Royal early
in August, at about the time when Napoleon issued his first orders to
Bernadotte. The Prince could only refuse with indignation Jackson’s
demand, and sent orders to Copenhagen to prepare for attack. He was in
the situation of Barron on the “Chesapeake.” Copenhagen had hardly a
gun in position, and no troops to use in defence.
The British demand was in itself insulting enough, but Jackson’s way
of presenting it was said to have been peculiarly offensive, and
London soon rang with stories of his behavior to the unfortunate
Prince Royal.[43] Even the King of England seemed to think that his
agent needed rebuke. Lord Eldon, who was one of the advisers and
most strenuous supporters of the attack on Copenhagen,--although he
said in private that the story made his heart ache and his blood run
cold,--used to relate,[44] on the authority of old King George himself,
that when Jackson was presented at Court on his return from Copenhagen
the King abruptly asked him, “Was the Prince Royal upstairs or down,
when he received you?” “He was on the ground floor,” replied Jackson.
“I am glad of it! I am glad of it!” rejoined the old King; “for if he
had half the spirit of his uncle George III., he would infallibly have
kicked you downstairs.” The Prince did not kick Mr. Jackson, though the
world believed he had reason to do so, but he declined to accept the
British envoy’s remark that in war the weak must submit to the strong;
and Lord Gambier landed twenty thousand men, established batteries, and
for three days and nights, from September 1 to September 5, bombarded
Copenhagen. The city was neither invested nor assaulted nor intended
to be occupied; it was merely destroyed, little by little,--as a
bandit would cut off first an ear, then the nose, then a finger of
his victim, to hasten payment of a ransom. At the end of the third
day’s bombardment, when at last the Danish ships were delivered, the
bodies of near two thousand non-combatants lay buried in the smoking
ruins of about one half the city. At the same time all the Danish
merchant-vessels in English waters, with their cargoes, to the value
of ten million dollars, were seized and confiscated; while the Danish
factory in Bengal was, without warning, swept into England’s pouch.
At the news of the awful tragedy at Copenhagen, Europe, gorged as
for fifteen years she had been with varied horrors, shuddered from
St. Petersburg to Cadiz. A long wail of pity and despair rose on the
Continent, was echoed back from America, and found noble expression
in the British Parliament. The attack upon the “Chesapeake” was a
caress of affection compared with this bloody and brutal deed. As in
1804 Bonaparte--then only First Consul, but about to make himself a
bastard Emperor--flung before the feet of Europe the bloody corpse of
the Duc d’Enghien, so George Canning in 1807, about to meet Bonaparte
on his own field with his own weapons, called the world to gaze at his
handiwork in Copenhagen; and the world then contained but a single
nation to which the fate of Copenhagen spoke in accents of direct and
instant menace. The annihilation of Denmark left America almost the
only neutral, as she had long been the only Republican State. In both
characters her offences against Canning and Perceval, Castlereagh and
Eldon, had been more serious than those of Denmark, and had roused
to exasperation the temper of England. A single ship of the line,
supported by one or two frigates, could without a moment’s notice
repeat at New York the tragedy which had required a vast armament at
Copenhagen; and the assault on the “Chesapeake” had given warning of
what the British navy stood ready to do. Other emphatic omens were not
wanting.
About July 27--the day after Lord Gambier’s fleet sailed from the
Downs, and the day when Monroe first saw in the newspapers an account
of the “Leopard’s” attack on the “Chesapeake”--the American minister
might have read a report made by a committee of the House of Commons
on the commercial state of the West Indian Islands. The main evil,
said the committee,[45] was the very unfavorable state of the foreign
market, in which the British merchant formerly enjoyed nearly a
monopoly. “The result of all their inquiries on this most important
part of the subject has brought before their eyes one grand and primary
evil from which all the others are easily to be deduced; namely, the
facility of intercourse between the hostile colonies and Europe under
the American neutral flag, by means of which not only the whole of
their produce is carried to a market, but at charges little exceeding
those of peace, while the British planter is burdened with all the
inconvenience, risk, and expense resulting from a state of war.” To
correct this evil, a blockade of the enemies’ colonies had been
suggested; “and such a measure, if it could be strictly enforced,
would undoubtedly afford relief to our export trade. But a measure
of more permanent and certain advantage would be the enforcement of
those restrictions on the trade between neutrals and the enemies’
colonies which were formerly maintained by Great Britain, and from the
relaxation of which the enemies’ colonies obtain indirectly, during
war, all the advantages of peace.”
In its way this West Indian Report was stamped with the same Napoleonic
character as the bombardment of Copenhagen or the assault on the
“Chesapeake;” in a parliamentary manner it admitted that England,
with all her navy, could not enforce a blockade by lawful means, and
therefore it had become “a matter of evident and imperious necessity”
that she should turn pirate. The true sense of the recommendation
was neither doubted nor disputed in England, except as matter of
parliamentary form. That the attempt to cut off the supply of French
and Spanish sugar from Europe, either by proclaiming a paper blockade
or the Rule of 1756, might result in war with the United States was
conceded, and no one in private denied that America in such a case
had just cause for war. The evidence upon which the Report founded
its conclusion largely dealt with the probable effect on the colonies
of a war with the United States; and the Report itself, in language
only so far veiled as to be decent, intimated that although war would
be essentially detrimental to the islands it would not be fatal, and
would be better than their actual condition. The excuse for what every
reasonable Englishman frankly avowed to be “a system of piracy,”[46]
was that the West Indian colonies must perish without it, and England
must share their fate. In vain did less terrified men, like Alexander
Baring or William Spence, preach patience, explaining that the true
difficulty with the West Indies was an overproduction of sugar, with
which the Americans had nothing to do.
“To charge the distresses of the West Indian planters upon the
American carriers,” said Spence,[47] “is almost as absurd as it would
be for the assassin to lay the blame of murder upon the arsenic which
he had purposely placed in the sugar-dish of his friend.”
Thus Parliament, Ministry, navy, colonies, the shipping and the landed
interest of England had wrought public opinion to the point of war with
the United States at the moment when Lord Gambier bombarded Copenhagen
and the “Leopard” fired into the “Chesapeake.” The tornado of prejudice
and purposeless rage which broke into expression on the announcement
that a British frigate had fired into an American, surpassed all
experience. The English newspapers for the year that followed the
“Chesapeake” affair seemed irrational, the drunkenness of power
incredible. The Americans, according to the “Morning Post” of Jan. 14,
1808, “possess all the vices of their Indian neighbors without their
virtues;” and two days afterward the same newspaper--which gave tone to
the country press--declared that England was irresistible: “Our vigor
and energy have just reached that sublime pitch from which their weight
must crush all opposition.”
No one could say for how much of this extravagance Canning was directly
responsible; but the tone of the press was certainly an echo of the
tone he had so long taken, and which he stimulated. That he was really
so reckless as he seemed need not be imagined; although eighteen months
afterward, Lord Grenville with the utmost emphasis said in the House of
Lords,[48] “I do firmly believe that it is the object of his Majesty’s
ministers to do everything in their power to force America into
hostility with this country.” Lord Grenville occasionally exaggerated,
and he was probably mistaken in this instance; but he found it possible
to believe ministers capable of acting with the motive he charged on
them. In truth he had strong ground for the opinion he held, which was
by no means peculiar to him. As early as July 27, 1807, the “Morning
Chronicle,” in announcing the first news of the “Chesapeake” affair,
added:--
“We trust it is of a nature to be adjusted without that most ruinous
of all follies yet left us to be guilty of,--an American war. We have
rather more fear than hope however on the subject, when we reflect
that the present ministers are of those who consider an American war
as rather desirable.”
Within a short time the “Morning Post” avowed and proclaimed, in
articles evidently inspired by Government, the wish for war with
America:[49]--
“A war of a very few months, without creating to us the expense of a
single additional ship, would be sufficient to convince her of her
folly by a necessary chastisement of her insolence and audacity.”
In January, 1808, the same newspaper spoke even more plainly:[50]--
“For us, we have always been of the opinion that in the present temper
of the American government no relations of amity can be maintained
with that nation unless at the expense of our dearest rights and most
essential interests.”
Perhaps this tone was taken partly with the idea of terrifying the
Americans into obedience; but beyond question a strong party leaned to
violence. Monroe, who had the best means of knowing, felt no doubts on
this point, and warned the President of the danger to the United States.
“There has been,” he wrote Aug. 4, 1807,[51] “at all times since the
commencement of the present war, a strong party here for extending its
ravages to them. This party is composed of the shipowners, the navy,
the East and West India merchants, and certain political characters
of great consideration in the State. So powerful is this combination
that it is most certain that nothing can be obtained of the government
on any point but what may be extorted by necessity.”
Insane as such a policy might seem, Lord Grenville’s charge against
ministers had solid ground.
Special interests were commonly blind to the general good. That the
navy, the mercantile marine, and the colonies should have favored war
with America was not surprising; but that the mania should have seized
upon the English nation at large was a phenomenon to be explained
only by general causes. The true explanation was not far to seek; the
secret, if secret it could be called, was the inevitable result of
Jefferson’s passion for peace,--social and political contempt. This
feeling was unbounded, pervading all parties and all classes, and
finding expression in the most gross as in the simplest and least
intentional forms.
“Hatred of America,” said one of the numerous British pamphleteers of
the time,[52] “seems a prevailing sentiment in this country. Whether
it be that they have no crown and nobility, and are on this account
not quite a _genteel_ Power; or that their manners are less polished
than our own; or that we grudge their independence, and hanker after
our old monopoly of their trade; or that they closely resemble us
in language, character, and laws; or finally, that it is more our
interest to live well with them than with any other nation in the
world,--the fact is undeniable that the bulk of the people would fain
be at war with them.”
The Somersetshire squire and the chancery barrister in Westminster
Hall--the extremes of national obtuseness and professional
keenness--agreed in despising America. The pompous Lord Sidmouth, the
tedious Lord Sheffield, the vivacious Canning, the religious Perceval,
and the merry-andrew Cobbett--whose genius was peculiar in thinking
itself popular--joined hands in spreading libels against a people
three thousand miles away, who according to their own theory were too
contemptible to be dangerous. Except a few Whig noblemen, a number of
Yorkshire and Lancashire manufacturers and a great mass of the laboring
people, or American merchants like the Barings, and one or two Scotch
Liberals who wrote in the “Edinburgh Review,” the English public had
but one voice against Americans. Young Henry Brougham, not yet thirty
years old, whose restless mind persistently asked questions which
parsons and squires thought absurd or impious, speculated much upon
the causes of this prejudice. Was it because the New York dinners were
less elegant than those of London, or because the Yankees talked with
an accent, or because their manners were vulgar? No doubt a prejudice
might seize on any justification, however small; but a prejudice
so general and so deep became respectable, and needed a correct
explanation. The British nation was sometimes slow-witted, and often
narrow-minded, but was not insane.
For a thousand years every step in the progress of England had been
gained by sheer force of hand and will. In the struggle for existence
the English people, favored by situation, had grown into a new human
type,--which might be brutal, but was not weak; which had little
regard for theory, but an immense and just respect for facts. America
considered herself to be a serious fact, and expected England to take
her at her own estimate of her own value; but this was more than could
reasonably be asked. England required America to prove by acts what
virtue existed in her conduct or character which should exempt her
from the common lot of humanity, or should entitle her to escape the
tests of manhood,--the trials, miseries, and martyrdoms through which
the character of mankind had thus far in human history taken, for good
or bad, its vigorous development. England had never learned to strike
soft in battle. She expected her antagonists to fight; and if they
would not fight, she took them to be cowardly or mean. Jefferson and
his government had shown over and over again that no provocation would
make them fight; and from the moment that this attitude was understood,
America became fair prey. Jefferson had chosen his own methods of
attack and defence; but he could not require England or France to
respect them before they had been tried.
Contempt for America was founded on belief in American cowardice; but
beneath the disdain lurked an uneasy doubt which gave to contempt the
virulence of fear. The English nation, and especially the aristocracy,
believed that America was biding her time; that she expected to become
a giant; and that if she succeeded, she would use her strength as
every other giant in the world’s history had done before her. The
navy foresaw a day when American fleets might cover the ocean. The
merchant dreaded competition with Yankee shrewdness, for he well knew
the antiquated processes, the time-honored percentages, the gross
absurdities of English trade, the abuses of the custom-house, the
clumsiness and extravagance of government. The shipowners had even
more cause for alarm. Already the American ship was far in advance of
the British model,--a swifter and more economical sailer, more heavily
sparred and more daringly handled. In peace competition had become
difficult, until the British ship-owner cried for war; yet he already
felt, without acknowledging it even to himself, that in war he was
likely to enjoy little profit or pleasure on the day when the long,
low, black hull of the Yankee privateer, with her tapering, bending
spars, her long-range gun, and her sharp-faced captain, should appear
on the western horizon, and suddenly, at sight of the heavy lumbering
British merchantman, should fling out her white wings of canvas and fly
down on her prey.
Contempt, mingled with vague alarm, was at the bottom of England’s
conduct toward America; and whatever the swarm of newspaper statesmen
might say or think, the element of alarm was so great that the Tory
ministers, although they might expect war, did not want it, and hoped
to prevent it by the very boldness of their policy. Even Canning was
cautious enough to prefer not to give America occasion for learning her
strength. He meant to clip her wings only so far as she would submit to
have her wings clipped; and he not only astonished but disgusted the
over-zealous politicians who applauded Admiral Berkeley, by disavowing
the admiral’s doctrines of international law and recalling the admiral
himself. The war faction broke into a paroxysm of rage[53] when this
decision became known, and for a time Canning seemed likely to be
devoured by his own hounds, so vociferous was their outcry. Monroe and
Pinkney were loud in praise of Canning’s and Perceval’s temperate and
candid behavior.[54]
Canning was obliged to defend himself, and under his promptings a
long reply to his critics was written for the “Morning Post,”[55]--a
newspaper version of the instructions carried by his special minister
to Washington. He excused his treatment of Admiral Berkeley on the
ground that lawyers recognized no right of search in national ships.
The excuse was evidently feeble. The law, or at least the lawyers,
of England had hitherto justified every act which the government had
chosen to commit,--the seizure of the Spanish treasure-ships in 1804,
accompanied by the unnecessary destruction of hundreds of lives; the
secret seizure of the larger part of American commerce in 1805, by
collusion with the Admiralty judges; the paper blockade of Charles
James Fox in 1806; the Order in Council of January, 1807, by which
Lord Howick cut off another main branch of neutral commerce with which
England had no legal right to interfere; finally, the lawyers justified
the bombardment of Copenhagen as an act of necessary defence, and were
about to justify a general control of all neutral commerce as an act of
retaliation. To suppose that law so elastic, or lawyers with minds so
fertile, could discover no warrant for Berkeley’s act was preposterous.
To neutral commerce England had no legal right; yet she took it, and
her lawyers invented a title. To her citizens and seamen she actually
had a legal right, recognized by every court in Christendom; and if
after a fair demand on the neutral government she found that her right
could be satisfied only by violating neutral jurisdiction, the lawyers,
in view of all their other decisions, must hold that such violation
was a matter of expediency and not of law. Canning’s critics in reply
to his assertion that the lawyers would recognize no right of search
in national ships, could fairly say that he was alone to blame,--he
should have ordered them to find it. George Canning could not seriously
propose to sacrifice a vital English interest in obedience to the
scrupulous legal morality of Spencer Perceval, Lord Eldon, Sir William
Scott, and Sir Vicary Gibbs.
In truth, Canning had reasons more forcible. With a character not
unlike that which Dryden ascribed to Lord Shaftesbury, he was pleased
with the danger when the waves ran high; and if he steered too near
the shoals in order to prove his wit, he did not wish to run the
vessel ashore. He disavowed Admiral Berkeley, not because the lawyers
were unable to prove whatever the government required, but because
the right of searching foreign ships-of-war was not worth asserting,
and would cost more than it could ever bring in return. Besides this
obvious reason, he was guided by another motive which would alone have
turned the scale. Perceval had invented a scheme for regulating neutral
commerce. This measure had begun to take a character so stern that
even its author expected it to produce war with the United States; and
if war could be avoided at all, it could be avoided only by following
Erskine’s advice, and by sending to America, before the new Orders in
Council, an apology for the attack on the “Chesapeake.”
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Peter Plymley’s Letters, ix.
[37] Peter Plymley’s Letters, i.
[38] Malmesbury’s Diary, iv. 376.
[39] Canning to Boringdon, Nov. 19, 1799; Stapleton’s Canning, p. 43.
[40] Correspondance, xv. 467.
[41] Napoleon to Berthier, Aug. 17, 1807; Correspondance, xv. 504.
[42] Malmesbury’s Diary, iv. 392.
[43] Morning Chronicle, Oct. 7, 1807.
[44] Campbell’s Lord Chancellors, ix. 288, _n._
[45] Cobbett’s Debates, ix., Appendix lxxx.; Atcheson’s American
Encroachments, Appendix No. viii. 114.
[46] The Radical Cause, etc., by William Spence, 1808, p. 43.
[47] The Radical Cause, etc., by William Spence, 1808, p. 19.
[48] Cobbett’s Debates (Feb. 17, 1809), xii. 776.
[49] The Morning Post, Nov. 12, 1807.
[50] The Morning Post, Jan. 13, 1808.
[51] Monroe to Madison, Aug. 4, 1807; State Papers, iii. 186.
[52] Orders in Council; or, An Examination of the Justice, Legality,
and Policy of the New System, etc. (London, 1808), p. 61.
[53] Brougham to Lord Howick, Nov. 7, 1807; Brougham’s Memoirs, i. 386.
[54] Brougham to Lord Howick, Nov. 7, 1807; Brougham’s Memoirs, i. 383.
[55] The Morning Post, Oct. 23, 1807.