“Of any changes that may occur in the different places on the continent in the various custom-houses and other offices, which may render a change of signatures necessary, we are careful to have the earliest information, not only from our own connections, but from Mr. I. B., who has proffered his assistance in every way, and who has for some time past made simulated papers for Messrs. B. and P. of this town, to whom we beg leave to refer you for further information. “We remain,” etc. This singular document was accompanied by a list of about a score of places, for which these agents had clearances all ready at the instant for disposal to those merchants who, from the exigencies of the times, found themselves compelled to resort to such practices. Indeed these knaves knew perfectly well that if the merchants of England refused to participate in this “filthy commerce,” the traders in Boston would not have any such scruples, still less those of Pappenburg, or some of the ports of Danish Holstein. FOOTNOTES: [264] France asserted, and America seems to have admitted that the first departure from the Law of Nations was this Act of Mr. Fox’s Administration, and that this Act led to the Berlin Decree; but this is a pretence (see ‘Key to Orders in Council,’ p. 1). It is worth while to give briefly here the dates and order of these different decrees, etc. (1.) Mr. Fox’s Order for blockade of French coast, April 8, 1806. (2.) Berlin Decree, Nov. 10, 1806 (recapitulated, Nov. 24, 1806). (3.) Lord Grey’s Order in Council, Jan. 7, 1807. (4.) Orders in Council of Nov. 11, 1807, by the Portland administration. (5.) Milan Decree, Dec. 17, 1807. (6.) Bayonne Decree, April 17, 1808. (7.) Rambouillet Decree, March 23, 1810. (8.) Fontainebleau Decree, March 23, 1810. The Bayonne and Rambouillet Decrees were those most directly issued against the Americans. [265] We cannot read with patience such denouncements of barbarism, and such professions of liberty and justice from one who about this period ordered a poor bookseller of Nuremburg, by name of Palm, to be arbitrarily arrested, and brought before a military tribunal at Bremen, where he was condemned to be unceremoniously shot, because he had published and distributed a pamphlet, which questioned the “justice” of Napoleon’s acts, as the conqueror of Germany. If ever there was a martyr in the cause of “liberty” it was this poor man, whose most unjustifiable execution in August 1806, was regarded with horror throughout Europe.