We owned at this period from eight to ten thousand vessels, and built annually nearly a thousand more.  All the ships seized from 1800 to 1812 did not average one hundred and fifty yearly, of which more than one-third were released, and indemnity finally paid for half the residue:  namely, there were 917 seized by England, more than half released; 558 seized by France, one-fourth released; 70 seized by Denmark; 47 seized by Naples, and more property was detained by France than England.  But the sympathies of our Cabinet were with Napoleon; a moment had arrived when he had determined to reverse the laws of trade and exclude the exports of England from the Continent; and our rulers, regardless of our own commerce, determined to withhold all our produce, to cut off the raw material from England at the moment she had lost the sale of her exports, and by this combined process to bring her to submission.  They forgot, for the moment, how impossible it is to reverse the great laws of trade; that we thus gratuitously resigned to her the commerce of the globe; that China, the Indies, with their inexhaustible supplies, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Russia, and Africa, were open to her ships and might fill the vacuum.  The hazardous experiment was made.  Let us trace the progress of events.

May 16, 1806, England passed her Orders in Council, declaring the ports and rivers from Brest to the Elbe in a state of blockade.  November 21, 1806, Napoleon issued his Berlin Decree, declaring the British ports blockaded.  January 6, 1807, England prohibited all coastwise trade with France, and November 11, 1807, prohibited all neutrals from trading with France or her allies, except on payment of duties to England.  December 17, 1807, Napoleon issued his Milan Decree, confiscating all neutral vessels that had been searched by English cruisers, or had paid duties to England.  December 16, 1807, the day preceding the date of the Milan Decree, President Jefferson submitted to Congress the Embargo.  The Democratic party was then all-powerful, and the measure, after being debated for a few days and nights in the House, and a few hours in the Senate with closed doors, was adopted.  This gratuitous surrender to England of the commerce of the world, this measure whose objects were veiled in mystery, conjectured, but not understood, became a law December 22, 1807.

A leader of the Democratic party, in urging its passage, said,—­“The President has recommended the measure on his high responsibility.  I would not consider, I would not deliberate, I would act; doubtless the President possesses such further information as would justify such a measure.”  And the pliant majority acquiesced.