The most important of the British Orders in Council, as we have seen, bore date 11th November, 1807, the Milan Decree following on the 17th of December of the same year; but the Americans, having been apprised of the intentions of the English government, adopted precautionary measures by imposing a general embargo from and after the 22nd of December, 1807.[289] Nothing can prove more conclusively how unpopular this step was among the shipowners of the United States than the fact that every vessel in the foreign trade which heard the intelligence kept out of their ports, preferring to run the risk of capture rather than lose their share of the enormous profits they were making in their neutral bottoms, by a clandestine trade with France and England. The American government clearly foresaw that the extreme measures adopted by both belligerents would annihilate their foreign carrying trade, and restore to England that power and its accompanying commercial advantages, which her maritime superiority had already conferred on her in the great contest in which she was engaged. [Sidenote: Policy of Napoleon towards neutrals.] [Sidenote: Non-intercourse Act.] One of the objects of Napoleon by his decrees was evidently to prey upon the known susceptibility of the Americans, and to urge them, on the pretence of the independence of their flag, to resist the executive authority exercised by England, whether with regard to the right of neutrals, the right of search, or the impressment of American seamen, all fruitful sources of complaint on the part of the American government. Nor had he, indeed, unwilling listeners, for the Americans, in their diplomatic proceedings, exhibited an unequivocal tendency to favour Napoleon. Although statements were made in Parliament that the Americans would have joined England in the war against France if she would have consented to rescind the Orders in Council as regarded their shipping, all these allegations were unfortunately at variance with the truth, and were, in fact, only put forward by interested English merchants who could no longer avail themselves of American bottoms to carry on their trade. Finding their embargo inoperative, as American vessels preferred an adventurous commerce and large profits to a ruinous inaction, the United States government removed it; but as the European governments were inflexible in their policy, they immediately afterwards passed the Act of Non-Intercourse,[290] by which all commercial interchanges with France and England were prohibited; the result being the Rambouillet Decree, issued by Napoleon on the 23rd of March, 1810, which ordered that all American vessels and cargoes arriving in any of the ports of France or of countries occupied by French troops, should be seized and condemned. [Sidenote: Secret terms with America.]