propose to sacrifice a vital English interest in obedience to the scrupulous legal morality of Spencer Perceval, Lord Eldon, Sir William Scott, and Sir Vicary Gibbs. In truth, Canning had reasons more forcible. With a character not unlike that which Dryden ascribed to Lord Shaftesbury, he was pleased with the danger when the waves ran high; and if he steered too near the shoals in order to prove his wit, he did not wish to run the vessel ashore. He disavowed Admiral Berkeley, not because the lawyers were unable to prove whatever the government required, but because the right of searching foreign ships-of-war was not worth asserting, and would cost more than it could ever bring in return. Besides this obvious reason, he was guided by another motive which would alone have turned the scale. Perceval had invented a scheme for regulating neutral commerce. This measure had begun to take a character so stern that even its author expected it to produce war with the United States; and if war could be avoided at all, it could be avoided only by following Erskine’s advice, and by sending to America, before the new Orders in Council, an apology for the attack on the “Chesapeake.” FOOTNOTES: [36] Peter Plymley’s Letters, ix. [37] Peter Plymley’s Letters, i. [38] Malmesbury’s Diary, iv. 376. [39] Canning to Boringdon, Nov. 19, 1799; Stapleton’s Canning, p. 43. [40] Correspondance, xv. 467. [41] Napoleon to Berthier, Aug. 17, 1807; Correspondance, xv. 504. [42] Malmesbury’s Diary, iv. 392. [43] Morning Chronicle, Oct. 7, 1807. [44] Campbell’s Lord Chancellors, ix. 288, _n._ [45] Cobbett’s Debates, ix., Appendix lxxx.; Atcheson’s American Encroachments, Appendix No. viii. 114. [46] The Radical Cause, etc., by William Spence, 1808, p. 43. [47] The Radical Cause, etc., by William Spence, 1808, p. 19. [48] Cobbett’s Debates (Feb. 17, 1809), xii. 776. [49] The Morning Post, Nov. 12, 1807. [50] The Morning Post, Jan. 13, 1808. [51] Monroe to Madison, Aug. 4, 1807; State Papers, iii. 186. [52] Orders in Council; or, An Examination of the Justice, Legality, and Policy of the New System, etc. (London, 1808), p. 61. [53] Brougham to Lord Howick, Nov. 7, 1807; Brougham’s Memoirs, i. 386. [54] Brougham to Lord Howick, Nov. 7, 1807; Brougham’s Memoirs, i. 383. [55] The Morning Post, Oct. 23, 1807. CHAPTER IV. The Orders in Council of Nov. 11, 1807, gave an impulse so energetic to the history of the United States; they worked so effectually to drive America into a new path, and to break the power and blot out the memory of Virginia and Massachusetts principles,--that every detail of their history was important. Englishmen were little likely to dwell on acts of which even at the time England was at heart ashamed, and which she afterward remembered with astonishment. To Americans alone the statesmanship of Spencer Perceval and George Canning was a matter of so much interest as to deserve study.