=The Impressment of Seamen.=—­That was not all.  Great Britain, in dire need of men for her navy, adopted the practice of stopping American ships, searching them, and carrying away British-born sailors found on board.  British sailors were so badly treated, so cruelly flogged for trivial causes, and so meanly fed that they fled in crowds to the American marine.  In many cases it was difficult to tell whether seamen were English or American.  They spoke the same language, so that language was no test.  Rovers on the deep and stragglers in the ports of both countries, they frequently had no papers to show their nativity.  Moreover, Great Britain held to the old rule—­“Once an Englishman, always an Englishman”—­a doctrine rejected by the United States in favor of the principle that a man could choose the nation to which he would give allegiance.  British sea captains, sometimes by mistake, and often enough with reckless indifference, carried away into servitude in their own navy genuine American citizens.  The process itself, even when executed with all the civilities of law, was painful enough, for it meant that American ships were forced to “come to,” and compelled to rest submissively under British guns until the searching party had pried into records, questioned seamen, seized and handcuffed victims.  Saints could not have done this work without raising angry passions, and only saints could have endured it with patience and fortitude.

Had the enactment of the scenes been confined to the high seas and knowledge of them to rumors and newspaper stories, American resentment might not have been so intense; but many a search and seizure was made in sight of land.  British and French vessels patrolled the coasts, firing on one another and chasing one another in American waters within the three-mile limit.  When, in the summer of 1807, the American frigate Chesapeake refused to surrender men alleged to be deserters from King George’s navy, the British warship Leopard opened fire, killing three men and wounding eighteen more—­an act which even the British ministry could hardly excuse.  If the French were less frequently the offenders, it was not because of their tenderness about American rights but because so few of their ships escaped the hawk-eyed British navy to operate in American waters.

=The Losses in American Commerce.=—­This high-handed conduct on the part of European belligerents was very injurious to American trade.  By their enterprise, American shippers had become the foremost carriers on the Atlantic Ocean.  In a decade they had doubled the tonnage of American merchant ships under the American flag, taking the place of the French marine when Britain swept that from the seas, and supplying Britain with the sinews of war for the contest with the Napoleonic empire.  The American shipping engaged in foreign trade embraced 363,110 tons in 1791; 669,921 tons in 1800; and almost 1,000,000 tons in 1810.  Such was the enterprise attacked by