alliances, published a pamphlet[294] which greatly favoured the American view of the subject, and exhibited a feeling of the greatest alarm lest “as past errors had brought us to the brink of a precipice, the next might throw us over it.”[295] [Sidenote: Declaration of war with America.] Although these Orders in Council were loudly condemned by the Whigs, who made them their leading stalking-horse, whereby to assail the ministry, the Tories and the government were inflexible, and chose rather to risk a rupture with the United States than to relax their policy. They were still of opinion that the infallible consequences of repealing these orders and of giving up the licence trade would be to open the ports of France, and to transfer to the United States the commerce of the world. This determination at last brought about the long pending rupture, but other reasons were not wanting to hasten this lamentable event. [Sidenote: Motives of the Americans.] The Americans, seeing the vast preparations made by Napoleon for the subjugation of Russia, had evidently calculated that he would succeed, and that, the continental system being established, they, holding a monopoly of the carrying trade, could, in league with France, humble England, their great maritime and commercial rival. Consequently their government declared war on the 18th of May, 1812, and General Hall immediately invaded Canada. But the English declaration of war was not issued until the 11th of October, 1812,[296] about the very moment when Napoleon commenced his fatal retreat from Moscow, which, however, was not then known. Mr. Barlow, the American minister at Paris, had been invited to proceed to Wilna in the rear of the Imperial army; and there can be no doubt that Napoleon, in the event of success, would have dictated the terms of the treaty with the United States which Mr. Barlow had hitherto in vain endeavoured to secure. Napoleon, as everybody knows, failed utterly in his Russian campaign, Barlow died in Poland, and the Americans found themselves at war with England on grounds which not one of their historians ever ventures to defend, and which their statesmen of to-day would heartily repudiate, if war on such shallow and selfish pretences was again attempted.