“The conduct of the British government in protesting the arrangement of its minister surprises one in spite of all their examples of folly. If it be not their plan, now that they have filled their magazines with our supplies and ascertained our want of firmness in withholding them, to adopt openly a system of monopoly and piracy, it may be hoped that they will not persist in the scandalous course in which they have set out. Supposing Erskine to have misunderstood or overstrained his instructions, can the difference between our trading directly and indirectly with Holland account for the violent remedy applied to the case? Is it not more probable that they have yielded to the clamors of the London smugglers in sugar and coffee, whose numbers and impudence are displayed in the scandalous and successful demand from their government that it should strangle the lawful trade of a friendly nation lest it should interfere with their avowed purpose of carrying on a smuggling trade with their enemies? Such an outrage on all decency was never before heard of even on the shores of Africa.” Madison exaggerated. The outrage on decency committed by the British government in May, 1809, was on the whole not so great as that of Sir William Scott’s decision in the case of the “Essex” in July, 1805; or that of the blockade of New York and the killing of Pierce in April, 1806; or that of Lord Howick’s Order in Council of January, 1807, when the signatures to Monroe’s treaty were hardly dry; or that of Spencer Perceval’s Orders in November, 1807, and the speeches made in their defence; or the mission of George Henry Rose in the winter of 1807–1808; or Erskine’s letter of February 23, or Canning’s letters of September 23, 1808,--for all these left the United States in a worse position than that created by the disavowal of Erskine. Indeed, except for the disgrace of submitting to acts of illegal force, the United States stood in a comparatively easy attitude after the orders of April 26, 1809, so long as Napoleon himself enforced within his empire a more rigid exclusion of neutral commerce than any that could be effected by a British blockade. “Still, I cannot but hope,” continued Madison, “on the supposition that there be no predetermined hostility against our commerce and navigation, that things may take another turn under the influence of the obvious and striking considerations which advise it.”