d States to American vessels of not
over seventy tons; a limit substantially the same as that before
imposed by France, and designed to prevent their surreptitiously
conveying the cargoes to Europe, to the injury of British monopoly of
the continental supply, effected by the _entrepot_ system, and doubly
valuable since the failure of French products.

This concession to American navigation, despite the previous
opposition, had become possible to Pitt, partly because its
advisability had been demonstrated and the opportunity recognized;
partly, also, because the immense increase of the active navy, caused
by the war, created a demand for seamen, which by impressment told
heavily upon the merchant navigation of the kingdom, fostered for this
very purpose. To meet this emergency, it was clearly politic to
devolve the supply of the British West Indies upon neutral carriers,
who would enjoy an immunity from capture denied to merchant ships of a
belligerent, as well as relieve British navigation of a function which
it had never adequately fulfilled. The measure was in strict accord
with the usual practice of remitting in war the requirement of the
Navigation Act, that three-fourths of all crews should be British
subjects; by which means a large number of native seamen became at
once released to the navy. To throw open a reserved trade to foreign
ships, and a reserved employment to foreign seamen, are evidently only
different applications of the one principle, viz.: to draw upon
foreign aid, in a crisis to which the national navigation was unequal.

Correlative to these measures, defensive in character, was the
determination that the enemy should be deprived of these benefits;
that, so far as international law could be stretched, neutral ships
should not help him as they were encouraged to help the British. The
welfare of the empire also demanded that native seamen should not be
allowed to escape their liability to impressment, by serving in
neutral vessels. The lawless measures taken to insure these two
objects were the causes avowed by the United States in 1812 for
declaring war. The impressment of American seamen, however, although
numerous instances had already occurred, had not yet made upon the
national consciousness an impression at all proportionate to the
magnitude of the wrong; and the instructions given to Jay,[107] as
special envoy in 1794, while covering many points at issue, does not
mention this, which eventua