“You cannot too much call attention to the grievances of the Americans against England in order to make them more sensibly felt,” wrote Champagny to Turreau, after the Emperor went to Spain.[27] “The Americans would like France to grant them commercial privileges which no nation at present enjoys.... But ... hitherto it has not seemed proper, in the execution of general measures, to introduce exceptions which would have really destroyed their effect. If the rules adopted against English commerce had not been made common, that commerce would continue through every opening left to it; England would preserve the same resources as before for supporting the war. A system of exception for one people would turn the rule into an injustice toward all others; all would have right to complain of a privilege granted to the Federal government which themselves would not enjoy.” Unanswerable as this reasoning was from the Napoleonic standpoint, it was open to the objection of placing Madison among the belligerents at war with England, and of obliging him not only to accept the rules imposed by Napoleon on the allies of France, but also to admit the corresponding right of British retaliation, even to the point of war. Until President Madison made up his mind to war with England, he could hardly be induced by Napoleon’s diplomacy to overlook his causes of war with France. Had Napoleon acted according to rules of ordinary civilization, he would at least have softened the harshness of his commercial policy toward America by opening to the American President some vista of compensation elsewhere. Florida seemed peculiarly suited for this object, and no one so well as Napoleon knew the anxiety of the late Administration to obtain that territory, which, for any legitimate purpose, was useless and worthless to France. In December, 1808, Napoleon could have retained little or no hope of controlling the Spanish colonies by force; yet he ordered the American government to leave them alone, as he ordered it to adopt the French system of commercial restraint. “I venture to presume,” continued Champagny to Turreau, “that if his Majesty has no reason to complain of the disposition shown by the United States toward him, he will show himself more and more inclined to treat them favorably. What will most influence his course will be the conduct pursued by the United States toward the Spanish colonies, and the care that shall be taken to do nothing in regard to them which can contravene the rights of the mother-country.”