“This question, however, need not now be argued to the extent which was necessary to justify the assertion of the late Government; because whatever might be the doubts upon it when the decree of France first issued, and before it was known to what extent neutrals would resist or acquiesce in it, since those neutrals have acquiesced in it, or at least have not resisted or resented it to the extent of obtaining a formal recall of the decree and an open renunciation of the principle which dictated it, nor the abandonment of the practices which flow from it,--they by their acquiescence and submission have given to Great Britain a right to expect from them (when her interests require the exertion of measures of correspondent efficacy) a forbearance similar to that which they have shown toward her enemy.” If Perceval’s two opening premises gave a strange idea of English statesmanship, his third was little creditable to the English bar. He took the ground that England might do what she would with American commerce, because America, whatever effort she might have made, had not already forced Napoleon to recall a decree from the application of which the United States notoriously had till within six weeks been exempted. Lord Castlereagh’s doctrine that America’s exemption aggravated her offence was a wide-minded argument by the side of Perceval’s assertion that America’s acquiescence was proved by the French decree itself. Considering that America had in this sense acquiesced in Sir William Scott’s decisions and the wholesale confiscation of her commerce, in the impressment of her native citizens and their compulsory service in the British navy, in the blockade of New York, in Fox’s paper blockade of the German coast, in Lord Howick’s Order in Council, and perhaps even in the “Chesapeake” outrage,--Perceval’s argument must have seemed convincing to Napoleon, if not to President Jefferson. If the law of nations thus laid down was sound, the continued presence of American citizens in British ships of war was alone sufficient proof of American acquiescence in impressment to warrant Napoleon in acting without regard to neutral rights. From a neutral or French point of view Perceval’s reasoning not only conceded the legality of the Berlin Decree, but barred his own right of retaliation, since England, as the first and worst offender, could not properly profit by her own misdeeds.