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The course pursued by each of the two governments, in this great enterprise of commerce-destroying, may be looked at from the two points of view, of policy and of rightfulness.

In the matter of policy, both Napoleon's decrees and the Orders in Council have been fiercely assailed and extensively argued. In so broad and complicated a subject, a probable conclusion can only be reached by disregarding the mass of details, of statistics, with which the disputants have rather obscured than elucidated the subject, and by seeking the underlying principle which guided, or should have guided, either government. It is possible to form a very strong argument, for or against either, by fastening upon the inevitable inconveniences entailed upon each nation by the measures of its adversary and by its own course. It is by impressions received from these incidents—or accidents—the accompaniments rather than the essentials of the two systems, that the debates of Parliament and the conclusions of historians have been colored.

As the combined tendency of the two policies, fully carried out, was to destroy neutral trade in Europe, the preponderance of injury must fall upon the nation which most needed the concurrence of the neutral carrier. That nation unquestionably was France. ⁴⁷³ Even in peace, as before stated, much more than half her trade was done in neutral bottoms; the war left her wholly dependent upon them. Alike to export and to import she must have free admission of neutral ships to her ports. Prior to the Berlin decree the British made no pretence to stop this; but they did, by reviving in 1804 the Rule of 1756, and by Fox's decree of May, 1806, blockading the coast from Brest to the Elbe, betray an apprehension of the result to themselves of the neutral trade with France. This should have put the emperor upon his guard. The very anxieties shown by a people of such mercantile aptitudes should have been most seriously regarded, as betraying where their immediate danger lay. The American market was a most important benefit to them, but American merchant ships threatened to be a yet more important injury. These having, under the circumstances of the war, a practical monopoly of carrying West India produce which exceeded in quality and quantity that of the British Islands, were underselling the latter on the Continent. The ill effect of this was partially obviated by the Rule of 1756; but there remained the fear that they would absorb, and be absorbed by, the commerce of the Continent; that to it, and to it alone, they would carry both articles of consumption and raw materials for manufacture; and that from it, and from it alone, they would take away manufactured articles with which Great Britain up to the present time had supplied them,—and, through them, large tracts of Spanish America.

Up to 1804 the course of trade had been for American ships to load for continental ports, receive there the greater part of the payment for their cargoes in bills of exchange on the Continent, and with these to go to British ports and pay for British manufactures, with which they completed their lading. If, on the other hand, they went from home direct to Great Britain, the cargoes they carried were in excess of British consumption, and so far were profitable to Great Britain chiefly as to a middleman, who re-exported them to the Continent. But, when Pitt returned to power, this course of trade was being sensibly modified. American ships were going more and more direct to the Continent, there completing their cargoes and sailing direct for home. Continental manufactures were supplanting British, though not in all kinds, because the American carrier found it more profitable to take them as his return freight; just as the produce of continental colonies was, through the same medium, cutting under British coffees, sugars, and other tropical products. British merchants were alarmed because, not only their merchant shipping, but the trade it carried was being taken away; and British statesmen saw, in the decay of their commerce, the fall of the British navy which depended upon it.

It was plainly the policy of Napoleon to further a change which of itself was naturally growing, and which yet depended wholly upon the neutral carrier. The latter was the key of the position; he was, while war lasted, essentially the enemy of Great Britain, who needed him little, and the friend of France, who needed him much. Truth would have justified England in saying, as she felt, that every neutral was more or less serving France. But in so doing the neutral was protected by the conventions of international law and precedent, which the British mind instinctively reveres, and for violating which it must have an excuse. This the emperor, whose genius inclined essentially to aggressive and violent action, promptly afforded. Overlooking the evident tendency of events, unmindful of the experience of 1798, he chose to regard the order of blockade of May, 1806, as a challenge, and issued the Berlin decree, which he was powerless to carry out unless the neutral ship came into a port under his control. He thus drove the latter away, lost its services, and gave Great Britain the excuse she was seeking for still further limiting its sphere of action, under the plea of retaliation upon France and her associates. And a most real retaliation it was. Opposition orators might harp on the definition of the word, and carp at the method as striking neutrals and not the enemy. Like Napoleon, they blinked at the fundamental fact that, while Great Britain ruled the sea, the neutral was the ally of her enemy.

The same simple principle vindicates the policy of the British ministry. Folios of argument and oratory have been produced to show the harm suffered by Great Britain in this battle over Commerce. Undoubtedly she suffered,—perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say she nearly died; but when two combatants enter the lists, not for a chivalric parade but for life and death, it is not the incidental injuries, but the preponderance of harm done and the relative endurance, which determine the issue. To the same test of principle must be referred the mistakes in details charged against British ministries. Military writers say that, when the right strategic line of effort is chosen, mistakes of detail are comparatively harmless, and even a lost battle is not fatal. When France decided, practically, to suppress the concurrence of the neutral carrier, she made a strategic blunder; and when Great Britain took advantage of the mistake, she achieved a strategic success, which became a triumph.

As regards the rightfulness of the action of the two parties, viewed separately from their policy, opinions will probably always differ, according to the authority attributed by individuals to the dicta of International Law. It may be admitted at once that neither Napoleon's decrees nor the British orders can be justified at that bar, except by the simple plea of self-preservation,—the first law of states even more than of men; for no government is empowered to assent to that last sacrifice, which the individual may make for the noblest motives. The beneficent influence of the mass of conventions known as International Law is indisputable, nor should its authority be lightly undermined; but it cannot prevent the interests of belligerents and neutrals from clashing, nor speak with perfect clearness in all cases where they do. Of this the Rule of 1756 offered, in its day, a conspicuous instance. The belligerent claimed that the neutral, by covering with his flag a trade previously the monopoly of the enemy, not only inflicted a grave injury by snatching from him a lawful prey, but was guilty likewise of a breach of neutrality; the neutral contended that the enemy had a right to change his commercial regulations, in war as well as in peace. To the author, though an American, the belligerent argument seems the stronger; nor was the laudable desire of the neutral for gain a nobler motive than the solicitude, about their national resources, of men who rightly believed themselves engaged in a struggle for national existence. The measure meted to Austria and Prussia was an ominous indication of the fate Great Britain might expect, if her strength failed her. But, whatever the decision of our older and milder civilization on the merits of the particular question, there can be no doubt of the passionate earnestness of the two disputants in their day, nor of the conviction of right held by either. In such a dilemma, the last answer of International Law has to be that every state is the final judge as to whether it should or should not make war; to its own self alone is it responsible for the rightfulness of this action. If, however, the condition of injury entailed by the neutral's course is such as to justify war, it justifies all lesser means of control. The question of the rightfulness of these disappears, and that of policy alone remains.

It is the business of the neutral, by his prepared condition, to make impolitic that which he claims is also wrong. The neutral which fails to do so, which leaves its ports defenceless and its navy stunted until the emergency comes, will then find, as the United States found in the early years of this century, an admirable opportunity to write State Papers.

CHAPTER XIX

Summary—The Function of Sea Power and the Policy of Great Britain in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

THE outbreak of the French Revolutionary War found Great Britain unprepared. For nearly ten years her course had been directed by the second Pitt, who, though inheriting the lofty spirit and indomitable constancy of his father, yet loved peace rather than war, and sought the greatness and prosperity of his country through the development of her commerce and manufactures and the skilful management of her finances. He strove also consistently for the reduction of expenditure, including that for the military, and even for the naval establishment. As late as February 17, 1792, when the Revolution had already been nearly three years in progress and France was on the eve of declaring war against Prussia and Austria, he avowed his expectation of many years of peace for the British empire; and the estimates provided for only sixteen thousand seamen and marines. "Unquestionably," said he, "there never was a time in the history of this country, when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace than at the present moment." When the war with Germany began, Great Britain proclaimed and steadily maintained an attitude of neutrality; and the Minister asserted over and over again, to France and to her enemies, the intention not to interfere with the internal affairs of that country. This purpose continued unshaken through the tremendous events of the succeeding summer and autumn; through the assaults on the Tuileries on June 20 and August 10, through the suspension of the king which immediately followed the latter date, through the revolting massacres of September, finally through the deposition of the King and the proclamation of the Republic. Doubtless these events gave a series of shocks to public opinion in Great Britain, alienating the friends and embittering the enemies of the Revolution; doubtless whatever sympathy with the French advance towards freedom the ministers felt was chilled and repelled by the excesses and anarchy which marked its steps; but, whatever their personal feelings, no indication appears, either in their public actions or in their private correspondence as since revealed, of any intention to depart from a strict, even though cold, neutrality, until near the end of the year 1792.

The leaders of the party in France, which at this time was exerting the greatest influence upon the course of the Revolution, had long favored war with foreign nations, as the surest means to destroy the monarchy and unite public feeling in favor of the Republic and of the Revolution. The course of events had justified their forecast. Prussia and Austria had given provocation; and, although the latter at least would not have proceeded to extremes, war had been proclaimed and the fall of the monarchy had followed. There was, however, one nation with which the revolutionists imagined themselves to be in sympathy, and which they thought also as a whole sympathized with them. That nation was the English; between England and France there was to be friendship, and concurrence of effort to a common end. Herein the French leaders fatally misconceived the character of English freedom, and the nature of its successive advances to the conditions in which it then stood, and through which Englishmen hoped for yet further enlargement. Reverence for the past, and, in the main, for the existing order of things; profound regard for law and for an orderly method of making needful changes; a constant reference to the old rights and customs of the English people; respect for vested rights, for agreements, for treaties,—such were the checks which had modified and controlled the actions of the English, even when most profoundly moved. The spirit which dominated the French Revolution was that of destruction. The standard, by which all things human were to be tried, was a declaration of human rights put forth by its leaders, which contained indeed many noble, true, and most essential principles; but, if aught existing did not at once square with those principles, the forces of the Revolution were to advance against it and sweep it from the face of the earth. No respect for the past, no existent prescriptive rights, no treaties that seemed contrary to natural rights, were to control the actions of the revolutionists. They were to destroy, and to rebuild from the foundation, according to their own interpretation of what justice demanded.

The courses and aims, therefore, of the two nations were wholly divergent, and, as these were but the expression in either case of the national temper, the hope of sympathy and concurrence was delusive; but it was a natural delusion, fostered in the hearts of the sanguine Frenchmen by the utterances of many warm-hearted friends of freedom in the rival nation, and by the more violent words of a limited number of revolutionary societies. The former of these were, however, quickly alienated by the atrocities which began to stain the progress of the Revolution; while the latter, being supposed by the French leaders to represent the feeling of the British nation, as distinguished from its Government, contributed to draw them further in that path of reckless enmity to existing institutions which led to the war with Great Britain.

Still, so long as the exponents of French public feeling confined themselves to violent and irregular action within their own borders, and to declamations, which did not go beyond words, against the governments and institutions of other nations, the British ministry remained quiet, though watchful. There are extant private letters, written in the early part of November, 1792, by the Prime Minister, and by his relative, Lord Grenville, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which indicate that they rejoiced in having maintained the neutrality of Great Britain, and that they looked forward to its continuance, though with anxiety. But on the 19th of that month the National Convention, which then comprised within itself both the executive and legislative functions of the French Government, adopted a declaration that it would grant fraternity and succor to all people who should wish to recover their liberty; ⁴⁷⁴ and it charged administrative officers to give republican generals the necessary orders to carry help to those people and to defend their citizens who had been molested, or who might be subject to molestation, on account of their devotion to the cause of liberty. As if further to emphasize the scope of this decree, for such in effect it was, it was ordered to be translated and printed in all languages.

By this official action the French Government had taken a great and important step, radically modifying its relations to all other states. The decree did not mention the governments with which France was then at war, limiting to their people the application of its terms. On the contrary, when a member of the Convention, a month later, proposed to insert words which should restrict its operation to those peoples "against whose tyrants France was, or should hereafter be, at war," and gave, as his reason, to remove the uneasiness of Great Britain, the motion found no support. The previous question was moved, and the Convention passed on to other business. ⁴⁷⁵

The men who then wielded the power of France had thus gone beyond a simple inveighing against other governments, and the mere use of words calculated to excite discontent among the people of other states, and had announced an intention to interfere forcibly in their internal affairs whenever called upon to do so by citizens who, in the opinion of the French Government, were deprived of their just liberty or molested in their efforts to recover it. The anarchist of our own day, who contents himself with verbally attacking existing laws and institutions, however vehemently, may remain untouched so long as he confines himself to the expression and advocacy of his opinions; but when he incites others to action in order to carry out his ideas, he is held responsible for the effect of his words; and when he takes measures leading to violence, he is open to arrest and punishment. Such as this, among governments, was the step taken by France in November, 1792. She not only incited the citizens of other states to rebellion, but announced her intention of supporting them, and gave to her generals the necessary orders for carrying that purpose into effect.

Meanwhile the Austrian Netherlands was rapidly overrun and annexed to the French Republic, which thus abandoned the lofty posture of disinterestedness, and the disclaimers of all desire for conquest which the leaders of the Revolution had made from the tribune of the Convention. Soon after followed a decree declaring the navigation of the Scheldt, the great artery of Belgium, open to the sea. This set aside, without negotiation, the compacts of the previous owners of the Netherlands, by which the navigation of the river from the sea was reserved to Holland, within whose territory the mouth lay,—an agreement consecrated by renewed treaties, and which, by long standing, had become part of the public law of Europe. The act strikingly showed the determination of the French leaders to disregard treaties which conflicted with their construction of the natural rights of man; for they were at peace with Holland, yet made no attempt to obtain their end by negotiation.

The interests and the peace of Great Britain were now seriously threatened. For over a century her statesmen had held, and held rightly, that the possession of Belgium by France was incompatible with her security. They had supported the legal, though iniquitous, claim of the Dutch to the exclusive navigation of the Scheldt; and, above all, the country was bound by a treaty of alliance to defend Holland, whose rights as defined by treaty had been rudely set aside by France. Moreover, on the 28th of November deputations from the British revolutionary societies were received at the bar of the Convention, and the President of the latter, in reply to their address, made a speech strongly hostile to the British Government, affecting to distinguish between it and the people over whom it ruled; a pretence which was equally maintained in the United States of America, where the French minister the following year dared to appeal openly to the people against the policy of their government.

On the 1st of December the British Government issued a proclamation, calling out the militia on account of seditions and insurrectionary movements dangerous to the state, and at the same time, as required by law, summoned Parliament to meet on the 15th. The hopes and the patience of Pitt were alike exhausted; and although he still continued to listen to any overtures that contained a promise of peace, he had determined to exact guarantees, amounting to more than words, which should assure the safety of Great Britain and her ally, Holland. Meantime the British forces should be organized and got ready to act. The French Government had proclaimed its intention of interfering in the affairs and overthrowing the institutions of all states, when, in its judgment, their citizens were molested in their efforts for freedom. To await supinely the moment when it should please France to act would be the decision of folly; nor was it possible, for one imbued with English traditions, to view without distrust a government which appeared to look for justice by disregarding law, and avowedly disowned existing compacts and treaties in favor of a speculative somewhat called the Rights of Man, concerning which, its own passions being the judge, revelations as numerous might be expected as were vouchsafed to Mahomet.

There are some who can only account for the different lines of action followed by Pitt, before and after 1792, in both cases with the indomitable tenacity of his race and lineage, by conceiving two entirely different personalities in the same man,—a sudden and portentous change, unprecedented save by miracle as in the case of St. Paul. More truly may be seen in him the same man acting under circumstances wholly different, and in the later instance unforeseen. It was not given to Pitt to read the future of the French Revolution with the prophetic eye of Burke. He had the genius, not of the seer, but of the man of affairs; but that he had the latter in an eminent degree is evident from the very rapidity of the change, when he was at last forced to the conviction that external conditions were wholly changed. He was at heart the minister of peace, the financier, the promoter of commerce and of gradual and healthy reforms; but in a great speech, delivered before he had begun to fear that peace would end in his time, he impressed upon his hearers his own profound conviction that all the blessings which England then enjoyed rested upon the union of liberty with law. Having enumerated the material circumstances to which the existing prosperity of the nation was to be ascribed, he continued:—

"But these are connected with others more important. They are obviously and necessarily connected with the duration of peace, the continuance of which, on a secure and durable footing, must ever be the first object of the foreign policy of this country. They are connected still more with its internal tranquillity, and with the natural effects of a free but well-regulated government.... This is the great and governing cause, the operation of which has given scope to all the other circumstances which I have enumerated. It is the union of liberty with law, which, by raising a barrier equally firm against the encroachments of power and the violence of popular commotion, affords to property its just security, produces the exertion of genius and labor, the extent and solidity of credit, the circulation and increase of capital; which forms and upholds the national character and sets in motion all the springs which actuate the great mass of the community through all its various descriptions.... On this point, therefore, let us principally fix our attention; let us preserve this first and most essential object, and every other is in our power." ⁴⁷⁶

It was perfectly consistent with this position that, when Pitt saw a neighboring state in convulsions from the struggle of a turbulent minority for liberty without law; when that state had not only proclaimed its purpose, but taken steps to promote a similar condition in other nations; when societies representing a small, but active and radical, minority in England were openly fraternizing with France; when the great leader of the English Opposition had, from his seat in Parliament, praised the French soldiery for joining the mobs,—it was perfectly consistent with his past that Pitt should oppose with all his powers a course of action which not only endangered the internal peace upon which the prosperity of England rested, but also carried into the realm of international relations the same disorganizing principles, the same disregard for law, covenant, and vested right that had reduced France to her then pitiful condition. Not only Great Britain, but the European world was threatened with subversion. That Pitt did not bewail aloud the wreck of his hopes, the frustration of his career, the diversion of his energies from the path that was dearest to him, shows the strength, not the instability, of the man. That he laid aside the reforms he had projected, and discouraged all movements towards internal change, which, by dividing the wills of the people, might weaken their power for external action, proves but that concentration of purpose which, sacrificing present gratification to future good, achieves great ends. Never does the trained seaman appear greater, has well said the naval novelist Cooper, than when, confronted with unexpected peril, he turns all his energies from the path in which they were before directed, to meet the new danger. "Never," writes Lanfrey of the critical period between Essling and Wagram, "had the maxim of sacrificing the accessory to the principal, of which Napoleon's military conceptions afford so many admirable examples, and which is true in every art, been applied with more activity and fitness.... The complications which he most feared were to him, for the moment, as though they did not exist. No secondary event had power to draw him off from the great task he had primarily assigned to himself." ⁴⁷⁷ All instinctively recognize the courage as well as the wisdom of this conduct in the dangers which the seaman and the soldier are called to meet; why deny its application to the no less urgent, and at times more momentous, issues presented to the statesman? If, as may fairly be claimed, it is to the maritime power of Great Britain that Europe owes the arrest of a subversive revolution, if to that maritime power is due that a great, irresistible, and beneficent movement toward the liberty and welfare of the masses survived a convulsion that threatened its destruction, then to Pitt, as the master spirit who directed the movements of the British nation, the gratitude of Europe is also due.

When Parliament met on the 15th of December, the king's speech mentioned the disturbances that had taken place in the country and the threatening state of affairs in Europe, and recommended an increase in the land and sea forces of the kingdom. This measure was alleged, among other grievances by France, as indicating an unfriendly feeling toward her on the part of the British Government; but it has been reasonably urged that she had already manned a fleet superior to that which Great Britain had in commission, besides keeping ready for instant service a large number of other ships, which could have no possible enemy except the British navy. Viewed simply as measures of precaution, of the necessity for which every state is its own judge, it is difficult to criticise severely either government; but the fact remains that France had been the first to arm her fleet, and that Great Britain did not do the same until substantial grounds of offence had been given.

By a singular coincidence, on the same day that Parliament met, the National Convention issued a second celebrated decree, yet more decisive in its character than that of November 19, which it was evidently meant to emphasize and supplement. The generals of the Republic were now directed "in every country which the armies of the French Republic shall occupy, to announce the abolition of all existing authorities, of nobility, of serfage, of every feudal right and every monopoly; to proclaim the sovereignty of the people and convoke the inhabitants in assemblies to form a provisional government, to which no officer of a former government, no noble, nor any member of the former privileged corporations, shall be eligible." To this was added the singular and most significant declaration that "the French nation will treat as enemies any people which, refusing liberty and equality, desires to preserve its prince and privileged castes, or to make any accommodation with them." It was impossible to announce more clearly that this was no mere war of opinions, but, on the contrary, one of principles and methods fraught with serious and practical consequences; nor could any despot have worded a more contemptuous denial of the rights of a people concerning their form of government. The revolutionary spirit, which underlay the frequent changes of men in the French Government, showed how fixed was its purpose to alter forcibly the institutions of other states, regardless of the habits and affections of their citizens, by the systems imposed upon the smaller neighboring nations, hammered all upon the anvil of French centralization, in defiance of the wishes and the struggles of the people concerned. Europe thus found itself face to face with a movement as enthusiastic in its temper and as radical in its demands as the invasions of the Mahometans.

To this fanatical, yet lofty, and in the masses of the French people generous and devoted spirit, continental Europe had no equal force to oppose. It is a common remark that the eighteenth century saw the appearance of several ruling princes who were possessed with the liberal views of the rising school of philosophers, and who sincerely desired to effect the improvement and elevation of their people,—to remove grievances, to lighten burdens, to advance the general welfare. The wisdom or strength of these men had not been equal to the task they had assumed. There still remained unjustifiable inequalities of conditions, grievous abuses, a depression of the lower orders, and a stagnation among the upper, which seemed to place insurmountable obstacles in the way of advance, and made it impossible for the masses to feel a living, national interest in governments which contributed so little to their happiness. This good-will among the sovereigns of the day was indeed a most encouraging symptom. It made it possible to effect the needed changes and to advance without a violent break with the past,—to have reform and progress without revolution; but to achieve these ends was beyond the power of the ruler alone: there was needed the voice and co-operation of all classes in the state. This Louis XVI. had sought to obtain; but unfortunately, not only for France but for Europe, the most numerous and important of the orders of the States-General had met the difficulties of the situation, the outcome of centuries, not with firmness, but with impatience. From the beginning was shown the determination to break with the past,—to proceed at a bound to the desired goal. No regard was had to the fitness of the people for such sudden change, to the immense conservative force of established custom, nor to the value of continuity in the life of a nation. Nor was this all. Law, as well as custom, was lightly set at nought. The first Assembly threw off the fetters imposed by its instructions, and assumed powers which had not been confided to it. By means of these usurped faculties the Constituent Assembly radically changed the constitution of France.