The policy of these decrees became the battle-ground of party in England during several successive years. In fact they affected so many powerful classes in so many different ways, that it was natural that in a parliamentary government, not then always acting from the most disinterested motives, a great party clamour should be created. Nor, indeed, can it be doubted that the Berlin Decrees, and still more the Milan and Bayonne Decrees, struck a heavy blow at the American neutral trade; while, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that the merchants of England carried on a profitable clandestine trade with the continent through the intermediation of neutral ships, chiefly American. This commerce Napoleon resolved to destroy at the hazard of risking a war with the United States; and by the policy he pursued in coercing the Americans to resist the English Orders in Council, he achieved two objects: first, he discountenanced and did all he could to suppress a trade which enriched his enemies, and secondly, he fomented a feeling of hostility against England, whereby, as was proved in the sequel, England found a new enemy ranged against her. The merchants connected with America, who had employed their shipping in carrying on a contraband trade with the continent, inveighed loudly against the impolicy and “barbarous tyranny” of the English Orders in Council, and asserted that these were the cause, _the original cause_, of all the evils which ensued. Yet, in point of fact, those merchants who were not shipowners cared little in what vessels their goods reached the continent so long as the insurance effected secured them from loss, and they could carry on the trade to a profit. [Sidenote: Interests of the shipowners maintained.] If such a system could have been allowed to prevail, it is obvious that the shipowners of England would have been altogether shut out from carrying on the ordinary trade of the country, and the whole business of the transportation of commodities must have been monopolised by neutral powers, who would reap incalculable benefit from the calamities of the war. Napoleon, discerning clearly the usual practice of the ports of Europe, and the enormous quantity of English goods shipped from England and her colonies in American bottoms, at once struck a blow at this commerce by seizing every vessel belonging to that country then at Antwerp, Bordeaux, and Bayonne, and by burning those in the port of St. Sebastian; nevertheless, the Americans, instead of asserting openly and boldly the independence of their flag, as they did in later years, secretly intrigued with Napoleon to obtain a special immunity from his decrees for their shipping trade with England. [Sidenote: Napoleon infringes his own decrees.]