Governments to the background of diplomacy.
Admiral Berkeley had been recalled, as a mark of his Majesty's
disapproval. He arrived in England in the beginning of 1808, some six
months after the outrage, accompanied by the "Leopard." Her captain
was not again given a ship; but before the end of the year the chief
offender, the admiral, had been assigned to the important command at
Lisbon. To Pinkney's observation upon this dissatisfying proceeding,
Canning replied that it was impossible for the Admiralty to resist his
claim to be employed (no other objection existing against him) after
such a lapse of time since his return from Halifax, without bringing
him to a court-martial.[201] In the final settlement, further
punishment of Berkeley was persistently refused.

Although standing completely apart from the continuous stream of
connected events which constituted contemporaneous history,--perhaps
because of that very separateness,--the "Chesapeake" affair marks
conspicuously the turning-point in the relations of the two countries.
In point of time, its aptness as a sign-post is notable; for it
occurred just at the moment when the British ministry, under the
general exigencies of the situation, and the particular menace of the
Tilsit compacts between Napoleon and the Czar, were meditating the new
and extraordinary maritime system by which alone they might hope to
counteract the Continental system that now threatened to become truly
coextensive with Europe. But to the writer the significance of the
"Chesapeake" business is more negative than positive; it suggests
rather what might have been under different treatment by the Portland
ministry. The danger to Great Britain was imminent and stupendous, and
her measures of counteraction needed to correspond. These were
confessedly illegal in the form they took, and were justified by their
authors only on the ground of retaliation. Towards neutrals, among
whom the United States were by far the chief, they were most
oppressive. Yet for over four years not only did the American
Government endure them, but its mercantile community conformed to the
policy of Great Britain, found profit in so doing, and deprecated
resort to war. At a later day Jefferson asserted bitterly that under
British influence one fourth of the nation had compelled the other
three fourths to abandon the embargo. Whether this be quite a fair
statement may be doubted; but there was in it so much of truth as to
sug