g took active
measures. He then sent a special commissioner to the United States in
the person of George Rose.

The instructions which Rose carried with him to Washington, in January,
1808, were anything but conciliatory. As a preliminary to any
negotiations, he was to demand the recall of the President's
proclamation of July 2, and an explicit disavowal of Commodore Barron's
conduct in encouraging desertion from His Majesty's navy. The United
States was also to give assurances that it would prevent the recurrence
of such causes as had provoked the display of force by Admiral Berkeley.
That the Administration should have continued negotiations after the
full purport of these instructions was disclosed, seems incredible; but
it was not until the middle of February that Madison awoke to the fact
that the United States was being invited to "make as it were an
expiatory sacrifice to obtain redress." Yet another month passed before
Rose was given to understand that his mission was futile. By this time
public attention was engrossed in the contest for neutral rights.

Before the close of the year 1806, Napoleon was master of central Europe
and in a position to deal his premeditated blow at the commercial
ascendency of England. A fortnight after the terrible overthrow of
Prussia at Jena, he made a triumphal entry into Berlin. From this city
he issued, on November 21, the famous decree which was his answer to the
British blockade of the continent. Since the British had determined to
ruin neutral commerce by an illegal blockade, so the preamble read,
"whoever deals on the continent in English merchandise favors that
design and becomes an accomplice." All English goods henceforth were to
be lawful prize in any territory held by the troops of France or her
allies. The British Isles were declared to be in a state of blockade.
Every American or other neutral vessel going to or coming from the
British Isles, therefore, was subject to capture.

The British Ministry took up the gauntlet. An order in council of
January 7, 1807, forbade neutral trade between ports under the control
of France or her allies; a second order, November 11, closed to neutrals
those European ports under French control "as if the same were actually
blockaded," but permitted vessels which first entered a British port and
paid port duties to sail to any continental port. Only one more blow
seemed needed to complete the ruin of American commerce. It fell a month