ty
of the United States were every day becoming more dissatisfied with the
state of affairs in Europe and the consequent state of affairs at home.
The situation of affairs, on this side of the Atlantic, was indeed
gloomy and critical. France and England were fiercely at war, and were
arraying against each other the most violent commercial edicts to the
destruction of the commerce of neutral nations. There was the British
blockade from the Elbe to Brest; Napoleon's Berlin decree; the British
Order in Council prohibiting the coasting trade; the celebrated Milan
decree; and the no less celebrated British Orders in Council, of
November the 11th, 1807, together with the American Government's edicts
respecting non-intercourse with Great Britain and France to set on edge
the teeth of a people now little scrupulous as to what they did,
provided money could be made, or power be obtained. Strife had
introduced a disposition to intrigue; political cunning had become
fashionable; and political duplicity had lost much of its deformity in
the United States. The finger of derision was no longer pointed at
meannesses; the love of honor, and manliness of conduct, was blunted;
cunning began to take the place of wisdom; professions took the place
of deeds, and duplicity stalked forth with the boldness of integrity.
The American people wanted a quarrel that the whole boundless continent
might be theirs. They had badgered France out of Louisiana, and they
would badger England out of Canada and the West Indies. In New York and
Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, it was customary to talk of walking
into Canada and squat a conquest, as was afterwards carried into effect
with regard to Texas. Mr. Dunn, the President of the Canadian
government, looked upon the state of feeling in the adjoining republic
with suspicion. He conceived it expedient to feel the public pulse in
Canada. Like a skilful physician he approached the patient cautiously
and good humouredly, to prevent flurry or agitation, and in putting his
hand on the pulse of public opinion, he found it to be healthily strong
and regular. He prescribed only a draft of one-fifth part of the whole
militia of the province. The draft was taken immediately. The Roman
Catholic Bishop of Quebec, or rather the yet only Superintendent of the
Romish Church in Quebec, Mr. Plessis, now rapidly rising into favor
with the Colonial Court, promptly issued a _mandement_ to the faithful,
concerning the war, a