Thus Canning, although he warned Perceval against betraying the commercial object of his orders, instructed[73] Erskine at Washington to point out that American ships might still bring colonial produce to England, under certain regulations, for re-export to France. “The object of these regulations will be the establishment of such a protecting duty as shall prevent the enemy from obtaining the produce of his own colonies at a cheaper rate than that of the colonies of Great Britain.” Not to distress France, but to encourage British trade, was, according to Canning, the object of this “political” weapon. Thus Perceval, in the debate of Feb. 5, 1808, in discussing the policy of his order, affirmed that the British navy had been “rendered useless by neutral ships carrying to France all that it was important for France to obtain.”[74] The Rule of 1756, he said, would not have counteracted this result,--a much stronger measure was necessary; and it was sound policy “to endeavor to force a market.” Lord Bathurst, a few days afterward, very frankly told[75] the House that “the object of these orders was to regulate that which could not be prohibited,--the circuitous trade through this country,”--in order that the produce of enemies’ colonies might “be subjected to a duty sufficiently high to prevent its having the advantage over our own colonial produce;” and Lord Hawkesbury, in the same debate, complained[76] that neutrals supplied colonial produce to France at a much less rate than the English paid for it. “To prevent this,” he said, “was the great object of the Orders in Council.” James Stephen’s frequent arguments[77] in favor of the orders turned upon the commercial value of the policy as against neutrals; while George Rose, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, went still further, and not only avowed, in the face of Parliament, the hope that these Orders in Council would make England the emporium of all trade in the world, but even asserted, in an unguarded moment of candor, that it was a mistake to call the orders retaliatory,--they were a system of self-defence, a plan to protect British commerce.[78] Thus, too, the orders themselves, while licensing the export through England to France of all other American produce, imposed a prohibitive duty on the export of cotton, on the ground--as Canning officially informed[79] the American government--that France had pushed her cotton manufactures to such an extent as to make it expedient for England to embarrass them.