To place the full annoyance of these matters in a light to be viewed fairly by English people, let us suppose that the Americans and French were to go to war, and that England for once remained neutral—an odd case, I admit, but one which might happen. Next, suppose that a couple of French frigates were chased into Liverpool, and that an American squadron stationed itself off that harbour to watch the motions of these French ships, which had claimed the protection of our neutrality, and were accordingly received into ‘our waters,’—I ask, “would this blockade of Liverpool be agreeable to us, or not?” Even if the blockading American frigates did nothing but sail backwards and forwards across the harbour’s mouth, or occasionally run up and anchor abreast of the town, it would not, ‘I guess,’ be very pleasant to be thus superintended. If, however, the American ships, in addition to this legitimate surveillance of their enemy, were to detain off the port, with equal legitimacy of usage, and within a league or so of the light-house, every British ship coming from France, or from a French colony; and if, besides looking over the papers of these ships, to see whether all was regular, they were to open every private letter, in the hope of detecting some trace of French ownership in the cargo, what should we say? And if, out of some twenty ships arrested daily in this manner, one or two of our ships were to be completely diverted from their course, from time to time, and sent off under a prize-master to New York for adjudication, I wonder, how the Liverpool folks would like it? But if, in addition to this perfectly regular and usual exercise of a belligerent right on the part of the Americans, under such circumstances, we bring in that most awkward and ticklish of questions, the impressment of seamen, let us consider how much the feeling of annoyance, on the part of the English neutral, would be augmented.