our ships, and impressed into her service more than six
thousand of our citizens; till she had declared, by the proclamation of
her Prince Regent, that she would not repeal her aggressive orders as to
us, until Bonaparte should have repealed his as to all nations; till her
minister, in formal conference with ours, declared, that no proposition
for protecting our seamen from being impressed, under color of taking
their own, was practicable or admissible; that, the door to justice and
to all amicable arrangement being closed, and negotiation become both
desperate and dishonorable, we concluded that the war she had been for
years waging against us, might as well become a war on both sides. She
takes fewer vessels from us since the declaration of war than before,
because they venture more cautiously; and we now make full reprisals
where before we made none. England is, in principle, the enemy of all
maritime nations, as Bonaparte is of the continental; and I place in
the same line of insult to the human understanding, the pretension
of conquering the ocean, to establish continental rights, as that of
conquering the continent, to restore maritime rights. No, my dear Madam;
the object of England is the permanent dominion of the ocean, and the
monopoly of the trade of the world. To secure this, she must keep a
larger fleet than her own resources will maintain. The resources of
other nations, then, must be impressed to supply the deficiency of her
own. This is sufficiently developed and evidenced by her successive
strides towards the usurpation of the sea. Mark them, from her first war
after William Pitt, the little, came into her administration. She first
forbade to neutrals all trade with her enemies in time of war, which
they had not in time of peace. This deprived them of their trade from
port to port of the same nation. Then she forbade them to trade from
the port of one nation to that of any other at war with her, although a
right fully exercised in time of peace. Next, instead of taking vessels
only entering a blockaded port, she took them over the whole ocean, if
destined to that port, although ignorant of the blockade, and without
intention to violate it. Then she took them returning from that port,
as if infected by previous infraction of blockade. Then came her paper
blockades, by which she might shut up the whole world without sending
a ship to sea, except to take all those sailing on it, as they must, of
course, be