at war, had reached a marvellous height.  Its keels vexed every sea.  Its flag was now seen in the frozen circles; and now it reflected from its waving folds the fervors of the southern cross.  Our merchants, springing, as it were, in a single night from the station of ordinary dealers and dependents on foreign countries to that of arbiters and rulers of the commerce of the globe, were equal to their new position; and our sailors, responsive to their will, gathered with their Briarean arms the wealth of every realm.  Foreign statesmen in the recesses of the cabinet, and economists in the closet, beheld with amazement the rapid growth of our marine.  They saw a nation, which had not then attained its seventeenth year, enjoying a commerce which nearly equalled in tonnage that which England had been gradually forming from the date of the Norman Conquest to that hour—­a period of near eight hundred years.  At such an epoch a strict neutrality in respect of the contending powers was the dictate alike of duty and interest.  But such a policy was distasteful to England and France; and the result was the issuing of his successive decrees by Napoleon from Berlin and Milan, and the promulgation of the successive British orders in council.  These iniquitous measures, the last mentioned of which, the British orders in council, have been since pronounced illegal by the courts of England herself, declared our ships with their cargoes forfeitable to England if they touched a French port, and to France if they touched a port in England or her dependencies.

In such a conjuncture opinions might well differ in respect of the proper means of redress.  The administration of Jefferson sought it by long, able, and most urgent appeals to the sense of justice of the contending parties, but sought in vain.  When mere diplomacy, though managed by the consummate ability and adroitness of William Pinkney at the court of St. James, and by our ablest men fit the court of Napoleon, proved fruitless, the administration, at the earnest solicitation of its representatives at the hostile courts, determined to sustain our diplomatic action by such legislative measures as were likely to reach the interests of the contending powers.  Non-intercourse and the embargo, which kept our ships in port, followed; and the administration, still pressing upon the belligerents the injustice and impolicy of their conduct, awaited the effect of their restrictive policy.  Meantime its opponents were neither idle nor silent; and one long, universal cry rose from all the commercial cities.  Their ships, the merchants said, were rotting at the wharf; if kept at home, they would soon become worthless; if sent to sea, they could but be taken.  It was urged by the merchants that, even if England and France sequestered a number of their ships, still the profits earned by such as might escape confiscation would cover their losses on their investments.  An able minority in Congress sustained the views held by the mercantile interest; but a large majority of both Houses of Congress, and of the people, approved the policy of the administration.