At the close of the year 1806 American merchants might, as always before, send cargoes of West Indian produce to any port on the continent not blockaded, provided they could satisfy British cruisers and courts that the cargo was in good faith neutral,--not French or Spanish property disguised. Jan. 7, 1807, Lord Howick issued the Order in Council which, under pretence of retaliation for Napoleon’s Berlin Decree, cut off the coasting rights of neutrals. After that time the American merchant might still send a ship to Bordeaux; but if the ship, finding no market at Bordeaux, should resume her voyage, and make for Amsterdam or the Mediterranean, she became fair prize. Something has been already said[56] upon the character of Lord Howick’s order, and on the subsequent debate in Parliament, when, February 4, Spencer Perceval attacked the Whig ministry for not carrying the principle of retaliation far enough. Two objects were to be gained, said Perceval[57] from the opposition bench: the first and greatest was to counteract the enemy’s measures and protect English trade; the second was to distress France. Howick’s order neither did nor could effect either object; and Perceval called for a measure which should shut out colonial produce from France and Spain altogether, unless it came from England and had paid a duty at a British custom-house to enhance the price. If Lord Howick’s principle of retaliation was good for anything, Perceval contended it was good to this extent; and as for neutrals, there was no necessity for consulting them,--all they could reasonably expect was a notice. The Whigs naturally replied to Perceval that before further punishing America for the acts of France, America should be allowed time to assert her own rights. This suggestion called out Lord Castlereagh, who frequently spoke the truth in ways inconvenient to his colleagues and amusing to his enemies. In this instance he admitted and even accented a point which became afterward the strongest part of the American argument. He ridiculed the idea of waiting for America to act, because notoriously the Berlin Decree had not been enforced against American commerce:-- “This is one ground why we should look upon America with jealousy. It is an aggravation that she has, by a secret understanding with the French government, contrived to take her shipping out of the operation of the decree, that was at first general, and placed herself in a situation of connivance with the French government.”