Again, five days afterward, Baring attacked Perceval by an embarrassing motion on the subject of licenses. No such scandal as the license system had been known in England since the monopolies of the Tudors and Stuarts. Most of the trade between Great Britain and the Continent was conducted by the Board of Trade on one side and Napoleon on the other, under special licenses issued for the carriage of specified articles. In 1807 the number of such licenses amounted to sixteen hundred; in 1810 they reached eighteen thousand. Owing to practical difficulties and to Napoleon’s dislike, American vessels took few licenses. A nondescript class of so-called neutrals under the flags of Pappenberg, Kniphausen, and Varel, carrying double licenses and double sets of papers, served as the agents for this curious commerce which reeked with fraud and perjury. In the case of the “Æolus,” Aug. 8, 1810, the Court said: “It is a matter perfectly notorious that we are carrying on the trade of the whole world under simulated and disguised papers. The commerce of the world unavoidably assumes a disguise; these disguises we ourselves are under the necessity of employing, with simulation and dissimulation.” Dr. Joseph Phillimore, perhaps the highest authority on civil law in England, in two strong pamphlets[216] declared that ancient rules and practices had been rendered obsolete, so that the Admiralty Courts were no longer occupied with the law of nations, but only with the interpretation of licenses; and while the property of enemies was as invariably restored as formerly it had been condemned, the condemnation of true neutral property had become as much a matter of course as had been its restitution a few years before. No one, even among the sternest supporters of the Orders in Council, ventured to defend the licenses on any other ground than that of their necessity. Baring’s motion called up Perceval again. “The only principle on which Government acted,” said he,[217] “was to secure to the natives of England that trade by means of licenses, the profits of which without them would devolve to the hands of aliens.” This admission, or avowal, seemed to yield the whole ground of complaint which America had taken; neither Perceval nor Rose ventured to defend the licenses as in themselves deserving support; they stood only by the system. Their attitude led to another and more famous debate, which added an interesting chapter to the history of England.