This system and tariff Napoleon imposed on all the countries subject to his power, including Switzerland, Naples, Hamburg, and the Hanse Towns; while he exerted all his influence to force the same policy on Prussia and Russia. As far as concerned the only neutral, the United States, the system classified American ships either as English when unlicensed, or as French when licensed; it imposed Imperial functions inconsistent with local law on the French consuls in America, and violated both international and municipal law only to produce another form of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, in some respects more offensive than the original. The character and actions of Napoleon were so overpowering that history naturally follows their course rather than the acts of the undecided and unenergetic governments which he drove before him; and for this reason the replies made by Secretary Robert Smith to the flashes of Imperial temper or policy have not hitherto been noticed. In truth, Secretary Smith made no attempt to rival Napoleon in originality or in vigor of ideas or expression. Neither his genius nor that of Madison shone bright in the lurid glare of the Emperor’s planet. When Champagny’s letter of Aug. 22, 1809, reached Washington with its novel views about floating colonies, rights of search, identity of blockade with siege, and warning of confiscations in Holland, Spain, and Italy, President Madison, replying through Robert Smith, Dec. 1, 1809, contented himself with silence in regard to the threats, and with a mild dissent from the Emperor’s exposition of the _jus gentium_. “However founded the definition of M. Champagny may be in reason and general utility, and consequently however desirable to be made the established law on the subject of blockades, a different practice has too long prevailed among all nations, France as well as others, and is too strongly authenticated by the writers of admitted authority, to be combated by the United States.” A touch of Madison’s humor brightened the monotony of these commonplaces, but was not granted the freedom which the subject might have allowed. The President felt no wish to dwell on what was unreasonable or violent in Napoleon’s conduct. He passed lightly over the floating colony, ignored the threatened seizure of American commerce, and fastened on the closing paragraph of Champagny’s note, which promised that if England would revoke her blockades, the decrees of France should fall of themselves. This proposition, defined by Champagny and commented by Armstrong, required that England should admit the whole doctrine of floating colonies and siege-blockades. Madison knew it to be impracticable and deceptive; but he was not bound to go beyond the letter of the pledge, and although he declined to admit Napoleon among those “writers of admitted authority” whose law prevailed among nations, he instructed Armstrong to act without delay in the sense of Champagny’s suggestion.