New York, every one knows, is the great sea-port of America, into which, and out of which, many dozens of ships sail daily. With the outward-bound vessels we had little or nothing to do; but with those which came from foreign parts, especially from France, then our bitter enemy, we took the liberty—the Americans said, the improper liberty—to interfere. I speak not of French ships, or those which avowed themselves to be such, and hoisted enemy’s colours; for of these we, of course, made prize, without scruple, whenever we could catch them beyond the limits of the American neutrality. But this very rarely happened, and the ships we meddled with, so much to the displeasure of the Americans, were those which, to outward appearance, belonged to citizens of the United States, but on board which we had reason—good or bad—to suspect there was cargo owned by the enemy. Nothing appears to be so easy as to forge a ship’s papers, or to swear false oaths; and accordingly, a great deal of French property was imported into America, in vessels certainly belonging to the United States, but covered, as it was called, by documents implying an American or neutral right in it. In the very same way, I suppose, much Spanish property was, for a long course of years, imported into South America, in English bottoms, when Spain was at war with her Colonies. England, in that case, acted the part of a neutral, and learned, in like manner, for the lucre of gain, to trifle with all the obligations of an oath. During the period of Buonaparte’s continental system, especially, about the year 1810, many persons in England engaged largely in what was called the licensed trade, the very essence of which was false swearing, false papers, and the most unprincipled collusion of every kind. A horrible way of making money, of which the base contamination, in the opinion of some of our best merchants, is not yet quite washed away. So that poor Bony, directly and indirectly, has enough to answer for! At the time I speak of, 1804, when we were stationed off New York, and the French and English nations were at loggerheads, Jonathan very properly stepped in to profit by the fray, exactly as John Bull afterwards did when Old and New Spain were at war—except, indeed, that in the contraband, or covered carrying trade with the revolted Spanish colonies, we had to share the profits with our transatlantic brethren, while the two belligerents, shutting their eyes to their own true interest, allowed others to run off with the advantages.