“Our ability to continue the war,” he said,[70] “depends on our commerce; for if our revenues fail from a diminution of our commerce, additional imports will only add to the evil. The enemy forms one great military empire. The extent of country he covers does not render him so dependent on an export and import trade. The whole of that trade might perish and he could still continue the war. If one third of ours were to fail we should be soon reduced to peace.” The proposed order, Bathurst argued, not only restricted the neutral trade still further than had been done by Napoleon, but risked war with Russia and America, without materially hurting France; he added an argument which struck at the foundation of Perceval’s policy:-- “The object of the proposed order, though general, is in fact nothing but the colonial trade carried on through America; and by making it general we unite Russia in defence of a trade with which she has no concern or any interest to defend. As far as America is concerned, it must be expected she will resist it; and an American war would be severely felt by our manufacturers, and even by the very class of merchants now so eager for some measure of relief. We might therefore have to fight for a rule of war, new, the policy of which would be questionable, to support an interest which would be the first to suffer by the war,--against two countries, one of which the order unnecessarily mixes in the question, and with both of which we have great commercial relations.” Bathurst closed by expressing a preference for the Rule of 1756, or for a blockade of the West Indian Islands,--which, if the Admiralty thought it practicable, Bathurst considered as the best of all the measures proposed; but besides this radical change, he demanded certain alarming reforms. He complained to Perceval that already, even under the existing orders, such abuses prevailed that in order to prevent a public parliamentary inquiry he had been obliged by the general clamor of merchants to investigate their grievances:[71]-- “The result of the examination established the truth of the vexations to which the trade is now subject by privateers, who are enabled to persevere in them in consequence of the commercial restrictions and the proceedings of the Court of Admiralty. In a communication I had with Sir William Scott, who had been very angry with the inquiry, I proposed some regulations which, indeed, I knew would be unsatisfactory unless there were some alterations in the proceedings of his Court,--a subject which I did not venture to touch.”