A position so inconsistent with itself could not be understood by the people. Every one knew that if the decrees were not avowedly enforced in France against the United States, they were relaxed only because Madison had submitted to their previous enforcement, and had, in Napoleon’s opinion, recognized their legality. The Republican press, which supported Madison most energetically, made no concealment of its active sympathies with Napoleon, even in Spain. What wonder if large numbers of good citizens who believed Napoleon to be anti-Christ should be disposed to resist, even to the verge of treason, the attempt to use their lives and fortunes in a service they regarded with horror! CHAPTER XI. CASTLEREAGH’S long note of April 10, communicated by Foster to the American government, contained a paragraph defining the British doctrine of retaliation:-- “What Great Britain always avowed was her readiness to rescind her orders as soon as France rescinded, absolutely and unconditionally, her decrees. She never engaged to repeal those orders as affecting America alone, leaving them in force against other States, upon condition that France would except, singly and especially, America from the operation of her decrees. She could not do so without the grossest injustice to her allies, as well as all other neutral nations; much less could she do so upon the supposition that the special exception in favor of America was to be expressly granted by France, as it has been hitherto tacitly accepted by America, upon conditions utterly subversive of the most important and indisputable maritime rights of the British empire.” Long afterward Madison objected[172] to the common accounts of the war, that they brought too little into view “the more immediate impulse to it” given by this formal notice communicated to him officially by Foster, which left no choice between war and degradation. He regarded this notice as making further discussion impossible. His idea was perhaps too strongly asserted, for Foster offered, under other instructions, a new and important concession,--that England should give up altogether her system of licensing trade with the Continent, and in its place should enforce a rigorous blockade;[173] but Madison and Monroe declined listening to any offer that did not admit in principle the right of the United States to trade with every European country.[174] Thus at the last moment the dispute seemed to narrow itself to the single point of belligerent right to blockade a coast.